Star Fox NX Generation
by Skyhunter95
Summary: Roughly a year and a half has passed since the Anglar Empire was defeated, Dash Bowman has been appointed Emperor of New Venom, and has thus made diplomatic relations between Venom and the other powers of the Lylat System possible. The membership of team StarFox has temporarily dispanded to pursue their own goals. However, resurgence is brewing, and the StarFox team is oblivious.
1. Chapter 1: New Venom

**Chapter 1: New Venom.**

In the outer reach beyond Venom at the edge of the Lylat System; not far from where the debris field of what remains of the Aparoid home world now orbits, a small Sargasso cruiser zooms in from a distant twinkle of light in space from a warp jump and slows as it approaches a dark shadowy space station hidden by the darkness of space.

The ship slows to a drift; its thruster engines dimming, as four quad-winged Wolfen fighters emerge from the split, front launch bay of the ship and veer toward the silhouetted object. Guidance lights beam out in orbs out in front of the object, revealing it to be a massive cylindrical space station, and the four Wolfen fighters, in formation fly along the holographically projected guide lights until they reach a protruding segmented structure jutting out from the space station, and they flew in through an airlock shield, one by one, like food components through a cell's membrane. The structure of the space station was only slightly visible, a large cylindrical cone structure at the center with a bulbous top, and rings and protruding box structures jutting out here and there, surrounded by a few more box-shaped spaceships lazily drifting about like passive hive insects.

Wolf O'donnell, Panther Coroso, Leon Pawolski, and Algy Oikonny walk in formation down a busy metallic corridor, busy with ruffian ape soldiers going about their jobs, carrying documents and cases of equipment, all wearing similar gray-tan uniforms with patch adornments on the shoulders signifying rank, and sometimes hats featuring the letter "A" or even a full visor helmet.

The metal walls, floor and ceiling had a bronze color to them, and the floor and ceiling were connected by angular, rib-like support structure beams rising to the ceiling and bolting them together, there were rectangular lights slightly angled diagonally toward the center running along where the ceiling met the walls, and where the walls met the floor. Bulb-shaped lights in the middle of the paneled ceiling, and the floor was of tiles, and occasionally bulky vents bolted to the rest of the floor.

The walls and ceiling were a maze of wires, cords and pipes running along everywhere but the floor, and beaming lights running along the walls and ceiling, flashing with running lights like blood through veins.

Wolf wore a plated jacket, adorned by his spiked shoulder plating, beneath it a black cargo shirt, and jewelry, his gray jeans decorated by his spiked knee pads and plating on his thick boots. His bionic eye gleaming blue-green whenever passing through an area of low light in the crude metal corridors of the space station.

Panther wore a full jumpsuit, somewhat form fitting at his chest and shoulders to boast his masculine tone, the suit decorated by bold, bright blue and white stripes. It also had extravagant gold trimming along the padding on his shoulders, torso and on his boots.

Leon wore a simple, plated black uniform shoulder to his feet, and black leather gloves over his three-digit hands, and spikes running along the spine of his uniform over his hunched-forward back, and down to the lower back where his uniform freed his coiled tail.

Algy had on a simple, old-war Venomian pilot uniform, it was of a grayish purple color, with tubes running along his sides to his back, and a dome helmet hung from a strap connecting it to the rest of his suit by the back of the neck.

They emerge from a dual-sliding metal door as it slid open with a mechanical whine ending at a clank as it reached the edges of the doorway, the team strolled into a room lit at a slightly lower level than the crude corridors of the station.

The room was a small round room with a spider-web glass doom window at the ceiling, decorated by the stars and darkness of space, along the doom's walls were bulbous lights filling the room with a shading reminiscent of candle light.

A red, fine carpet rolled straight across the polished metal floor to a set of terraced steps, holding up a desk at the edge of the rounded room, an elegant desk where sat Dash Bowman, at a velvet-padded throne-like chair hovered. Dash rolled it back and stood up, his eyes met with Wolf's as the team stood firm at the bottom of the terraced steps, right at the edge of the red carpet.

Dash walked around the desk, wearing a suit-like uniform decorated by badges and banners across his chest, angular shoulder guards holding up a red and black cape that cascaded down his back partially concealing his monkey-tail, and the cape-collar wound around Dash's neck. Behind the desk, looming over him, was a detailed oil painting of Andross; staring down at his nephew from behind the painting's gold-trimmed frame.

"So glad you could make it, Commander O'donnell." Says Dash as he narrows his eyes slightly, composing his smile to a mere short smirk. Team StarWolf all jolt erect and raise their hands to solute him.

"At ease." says Dash, the StarWolf members lower their hands, Wolf's face remaining gruff and firm. The smirk on Panther's face recedes to a more plain look. Leon remains unchanged, and Algy simply makes a gruff blink of his massive eyes and crosses his arms. Dash raises his chin revealing his grin a bit more.

"Straight to business." he says. "What are the status reports of the Sargasso fleet?" he asks.

"We've managed to transport the station out of Cornerian occupied space and into this region, we'd have it on our side of Venom in probably about six hours." Wolf explains. "And my forces are all at our side as well, waiting on command." says Wolf.

"Good..." says Dash. Leon holds his hand forward, bending one of his long fingers up as he spoke.

"What's more, is that Andrew Oikonny's fleet had survived shortly before the Aparoid invasion, we found them hiding out in the Meteo belt, thanks to Algy here, he knew their secret transmission frequencies." he explains. "They pledge their loyalty to you, great emperor." says Leon.

"Excellent!" Says Dash with a grimace, and a shake of excitement in his voice.

"We also have support from some of the planets rallying to our side either...in my diplomatic ventures in...that part of the Lylat System.." Dash began. "I had met with some of them, and not all of them are happy with Cornerian leadership either. The Macbeth mining corporation supports us, thanks to their resources, and some of Venom's subterranean caverns that Corneria never found out about, we were able to rebuild an armada similar to the one we had in Area 6 orbit, we were also able to construct a small supply of IPBM's, and about nine Salvadora-class capitol ships, most of them were just those we had restored to functionality from Andross's old weapon supply depot he had hidden away, we even have two of them equipped with the planetary nova-cannons up to full functionality." says Dash.

Wolf stood there, his lip hung open.

"You've been busy, sir.." says Wolf.

"Indeed my friend." says Dash. Wolf raises his eyebrow.

"To be honest, sir, I thought you were all just peace talk with Corneria and the other Lylat System powers... now I understand what you were doing." says Wolf.

"The StarFox team, the very thing that had crushed us, and our later rebel uprisings, will be the foundation to our new empire, if you remember during the Anglar Empire, they helped me gain back power over Venom, where we have built a new unified planet nation. They will now be the bringer of their own destruction." says Dash.

He turns to the oil painting of Andross and smiles with pride.

"Uncle, you were the architect of something great...I will build your creation, I will finish what you started!" says Dash.

Wolf lowers his brow and takes a step forward.

"Dash, there's something you need to know, about your Uncle... _the great emperor Andross_." says Wolf.

Dash's expression quickly changes, as his mind analyzes the tone in Wolf's gruff voice.

"What are you saying.." Dash says as he looks over his shoulder, his head bent low, narrowing his eyes to meet Wolf's cold, almost robotic gaze.

"Andross lost...," says Wolf. "Uhh..." "..." "!?.." Panther, Leon and Algy all jolt from Wolf's statement, in utter shock.

Dash felt a swell of rage grow in his chest.

"Last I checked, you did too." says Dash.

Wolf lowers his head a bit, his snout angling low.

"Which is why we need to know what we are up against in the future...StarFox will come back, all of them, we need to be prepared to crush all of them.." says Wolf.

"Andross studied ancient peoples of our system, I remember him being obsessed with their power, he turned himself into that...thing... And yet, he was still vanquished by Fox." says Wolf.

"Wolf, what are you saying!?" says Leon as he looks at Wolf in shock.

"At ease, Leon.." says Wolf.

"We will learn from our mistakes, and do it right this time..." says Dash.

"When will our invasion begin?" Wolf asks, as he looks toward a holographic map of the Lylat system that stood flickering in the corner.

"I only just got back from our previous visit with the Lylat peace embassy on Animus, we should wait a few more days... It won't be long now." says Dash.

The door flung open as Dash sat back at his desk, dismissing the StarWolf team, the group walked through the sliding doors and began down the corridor, returning through an open area, surrounded by dozens of standard venomian fighters suspended from launch racks.

"Wolf, why would you say something like that to our emperor, did you want to tan our hides!?" Algy asks.

"He wouldn't do anything to us, Algy...he needs us for his army... I am loyal to him, but how can we expect this kid to do what Andross himself couldn't?" Wolf asks. Leon clenches his fist, crinkling loudly under his leather gloves.

"We already have the knife resting at Corneria's throat; we can have any idiot sit behind that desk as long as it gets the masses of New Venom fired up, our attack will be a slit of their throats, and victory will be ours." Leon says in his low cold voice. "Might as well light the cigar now." he mutters.

"If it's celebration you're looking forward to, Leon...I say we go to New Venom City and hit the bar.." Panther says as his voice grows low behind his fanged, lustful grin.

"Panther, wallow in your sin by yourself I want no part." says Leon as he flicks his bulbous slit eyes to him and returning forward.

"Just a suggestion.." says Panther.

"And Wolf, don't you think our leadership should be strong? You gave him a pretty harsh shaking back there, I'm surprised he wasn't angry." says Panther.

"He needed the reminder, if he wants to attempt to fill Andross's nonexistent shoes, that's his choice, but he needs to know not to let his arrogance be the downfall of his own regime." says Wolf.

"...And you say I talk too much.." Panther says with a roll of his eyebrows as they finally returned to their pristine Wolfen fighters.

A whining, 16bit chip tune alarm began blaring, a few feet from Fox's face as he awoke in his bed, face down in only his underwear, his eyes flicked open, and he glared at his alarm clock, projecting a polygon Arwing rolling about and shooting holographic lasers.

He flicked his hand forward and tapped his alarm projector, the polygon Arwing hologram played a short animation of it exploding from being touched by his hand, and its noise ceased after a scratchy explosion sound effect.

Fox rolled to face up, flicking his tail and pulling it through his blanket as he hoisted himself on his arms until he sat up. He rubbed his face with his palms as he scooted his paw-feet to the side of the bed and set foot on the carpet floor of his bedroom.

Later, he sat at his couch eating cereal as he droned off looking at the projector-screen displaying a brown-furred canine female with glasses stood on the news at a desk, dully going on about sanctions on Venom being lifted after recent peaceful negotiations between Corneria and Venom. Her voice fades out as Fox lets out a sigh, glancing toward some of the photographs of Peppy, Slippy, Falco and Krystal; all smiling as they and Fox among others were laid out on some furniture on the far side of his apartment living room.

It was an extravagant apartment towering high in the canopy of Corneria city as hovering cars skittered about on suspended roadways weaving in and around the buildings of Corneria city.

Fox turned away from the photos of his friends as he sank into his couch, his expression flattened on his face as the news lady's voice began to fade as Fox stared off through the apartment window.

Suddenly, his holographically projected screen began displaying an incoming message logo; represented by a blinking yellow button, and a chiptune-sounding ribbit noise running in repeat.

"Ahh, Damn!" Fox snaps to attention, leaping to his feet, and rushing to put a green shirt and pants on, his clothes strewn about his apartment in utter disorder.

Finally he got himself together, in a poor attempt to make himself look presentable, he grabs the remote and hits the C-button, and his projector screen is then filled by Slippy's smiling green face.

"Hey Fox!" says Slippy as he waves his hand.

"Oh, hey Slippy how's it going with you guys on Eladard?" Fox asks, instantly changing to a bright smile for his friend.

"Eh, could be better. We're still testing weapons here since the place is polluted from Andross's factories anyway, I've been trying to design new types of vehicles based on the Arwing, nothing's been too impressive but..." Slippy goes on.

"Oh hey!" Slippy bursts loudly with some returning enthusiasm in his voice.

"My Dad's been working on taking his warp-gate system a step further, he wants to perfect personnel teleportation, sorta like how we are able to transfer machines from ship-to-surface." says Slippy.

"Ugh, go on?" says Fox as he sits back down at his couch, watching Slippy on the screen.

"Well, if you remember back on Sauria, all those flashy teleporters?" Slippy asks.

"I try to forget." says Fox with a chuckle.

"Well, Dad and Peppy think those were built by the Cerenians, not the Saurian dinosaurs!" says Slippy.

Suddenly Fox could hear Peppy's gruff, accented voice coming in from the back.

"Eaggh!" Slippy grunts as Peppy's hand shoves him aside and Peppy squeezes in, taking up half the screen while Slippy was squished to the far side.

"How ya doin' Fox?" Peppy asks.

"Retired, like you were supposed to be, Peppy." says Fox.

"That ain't no fun and you know it, Fox, why don't you come on down?" Peppy asks.

"Mhhmm.." Fox grunts.

"Look Fox, I promise it would be fun, I'm actually not supposed to tell you this but we're also spearheading a new Great Fox III construction, it's nearly complete and its better than ever." says Peppy.

"They choose you to spearhead something like that?" Fox asks.

"You crashed the first one, Peppy." he adds.

Peppy slants his eyelids. "Real funny Fox..." he says. Fox manages a brief smile.

"Oh hey, you have any idea what Falco's been up to?" Fox asks.

"Oh I dunno, he ran off with Katt and their hot rodder buddy's. Now I don't know where they're screwin' around!" Peppy replies.

"And Krystal?" Fox asks.

"Well...difficult to say, since Beltino needs data on the teleporters; we decided it was only appropriate that she goes to the ruins on Cerenia, she says she was okay with it..." Peppy explains.

"...Krystal.." says Fox.

"Thing is, after the Cerenians were wiped out, you were just a young lad at the time Fox... we don't know much about what happened, there was never any conflict that we have had with Cerenia, but they never interacted with anyone else in the Lylat System either so we never got to know much about them or their powers." says Peppy. Fox looks down to the floor, lost in his thoughts about Krystal and her powers, she never seemed like she knew too much about her people either.

"Krystal, is she alright?" Fox asks. Peppy scratches at his facial jowls, and darts his eyes to the side, his ears bouncing about with each movement.

"Difficult to say, I guess she takes after her people, she's never been too open with what she feels, I'm sure she's okay." says Peppy.

"Are you?" Peppy asks, as his voice and expression quickly grow solemn, even detectable to Fox through the scratchy filtered digital audio of their screen.

"Yeah Peppy...I'm fine.." says Fox with a plain look on his face, other than being wide-eyed, nervous that Peppy was somehow concerned. Even if Fox himself was never aware of it, Peppy always seemed to know when something was wrong.

"Oh and uhh, any news on General Pepper?" Fox asks. Desperate to change the subject.

"I talked to him yesterday, he's still in the hospital, but he says that he'll be out by tomorrow." says Peppy.

"Gotta go Fox, Beltino's complainin' about somethin', I'll see ya later!" says Peppy.

"You take care of yourself, Fox!" Slippy adds.

Fox smiles as Peppy and Slippy disappear from the screen, and immediately after, his room returns to silence, and Fox leans back into the couch.

A small Cornerian landing shuttle flew on toward Cerenia; the planet had one single set of rings passing over its North and South poles, it had a dead yellowish gray shrouded color about it from its cloud cover. There was also an ugly, deep scar cracked through the planets surface, glowing orange as it cut deep into the mantle, the planet was as though gradually splitting into three sections, narrowly retaining itself as a solid sphere. Clearly visible in the distance of space, the orange gas giant that which orbited Sauria; Cerenia's primitive neighbor.

Rob64 sat at the ships controls, and Krystal sat at another swivel chair a short ways behind, her legs crossed, her hands on her knees as she was locked in meditative focus. The bridge of the ship was similar to a Great Fox, but cramped, and was darker and cruder. The ship could easily land inside the old Great Fox. The bridge consoles were set around three small swivel chairs, one forward, and two behind it with a small slide door at the back of the bridge deck behind them, the ceiling and walls ribbed by bulky framework support structure.

"We have arrived at, Cerenia." says Rob64 in a plain, digital voice. Krystal opens her cyan eyes to look on through the window at the dead planet, her birthplace, if she was even born on it. She lets out a sigh as she feels a slight, stinging sensation resonate on her heart and lungs.

Peppy's friendly rabbit face came on screen just above the bridge viewing window.

"Alright Krystal, see, shortly after the mysterious disaster that took place on Cerenia, the planet was placed as a 'Do-not-enter' zone. What little diplomatic interaction they made with others was brief, they allowed us to build an embassy on their homeworld, but they merely put a teleporter there that leads to one on Corneria, but its never used anymore. They were always peaceful and never approached any other group in the Lylat System with any sort of aggression whatsoever. They even came to Lylatian unity meetings to promote organization of a singular Lylat alliance." says Peppy. Krystal raised her hand to her side and stroked her thumb to her fingers.

Krystal wore the same uniform she wore during the Aparoid war, but she had now tweaked it with traditional Cerenian-style armor, decorated by the mystical symbols she has as permanent markings in her fur, it always confused her that they fashioned armor and weapons when they considered themselves peaceful, but she felt it suited her more than most of the clothes and uniforms worn by most of the Lylat System. Her uniform was a dark blue and black form fitting suit, but now featured dark blue plating on her thighs, knees and shins, and bracing on her forearms, biceps and shoulders. There was a jem-encrested jewel ornament on her chest that twined a blackish blue cape draped over her shoulders and down her back, disrupted occasionally by her tail, still decorated by silver rings.

"We've given coordinates leading straight to the old Cornerian embassy marked on your map." says Peppy. "Slippy has transferred the coordinates to your Arwing when you are ready, Krys, but once you get to the surface we don't know what's down there so be cautious." says Peppy. Krystal brushed her beaded blue hair strands aside aside as she stood up, twiddling her hair in her fingers as she walked around behind Rob, whom made repetitive mechanical movements with his arms as he tapped away at controls.

"Given what we have seen before, I don't think there's anything down there that could scare me." she says, unfiltered of her proud accent.

Peppy's face sank to a glum look. Krystal raised her eyebrows as his expression changed, letting a nervous breath leave her lips.

"Peppy?"

"There still might be things you wouldn't like to see, so be ready." says Peppy.

"I will, Peppy...Thank you.." she says in a squeaky tone of her voice.

"Be safe, Krystal." says Peppy as Krystal turned her back to him, turning for the door.

Rob64 made a turn as Krystal headed for the back doorway.

"Surface conditions are highly hazardous, prep yourself with protective clothing." Says Rob64. He turns and hits a button, and turns back to Krystal. Her reflection staring her back in his red visual scanner.

Krystal grabbed and through over her shoulder a silver backpack, pressing her cape a bit, and then took up a helmet with tubes leading to a box-console that hung like a necklace, and put it on over her head, her face showing through a dome-visor with a greenish blue filter.

The single door slid open with a hiss, and she stops, turns to Rob64 as he watched her walk through the doorway.

"Thank-you, Rob. I will return soon." she says. Rob64 bobs his head once, before spinning at the waist, and peering down on a console's controls.

She walked through the doorway that lead to an Arwing held on a suspension rack, down below it had an airlock door that slid open at the bottom.

The lower door folds open, and the Arwing descends from the belly of the ship, and rockets forward with a blast of its thruster boosters. The Arwing zooms and veers toward Cerenia, trailed by a blue stream of light that which transitioned to a reddish pink as it came in contact with the pressure and atmosphere of Cerenia.

The Arwing descended through gray-yellow clouds over a circular ruins of an industrial area, the buildings yet retained a historic style, build rising upward in pyramid or monolithic shapes decorated by symbols and etch work. It was all but covered in black ash, and crumbled. Everything here has since been slowly buried or eroded by the endless lifeless winds blowing about sand and dust.

Krystal looked on her digitized map, and saw what was clearly a Cornerian building; box-like unlike the others sitting at a street intersection of the city.

Like her, it was of another culture standing among inhabitants of a different world, an alien to all others.

The buildings lay in a sea of dust as her Arwing hovered in a short ways in an opening not far from the Cornerian embassy; rising from the dust at an angle, and crumbled inward in places. The Arwing's landing gear shifted outward like spindly legs as it landed, dust being thrown about created a grayish shroud around it.

The hatch whined open and Krystal hung from the lip of the cock-pit before setting her feet down on the soft snow-like carpet of ash and dust. She hit a button on the side of the Arwing and her hatch closed.

There were pillars of smoke in the distance, rising from the still-smoldering ruin. There were flakes of dust coming down like snow as she walked toward the building. She drew her staff, and walked with it like a third leg. Her cape, and tail fur fluttered with the wind as she walked. Other than the huffing blow of her air supply, through her helmet it was near silence and the blowing of low, dead wind.

She stood at the set of dual doors, she held her staff forward, and drove the spade of her staff through the crack between the doors, and roughly shoved her staff, splitting the doorway by force. She pried it open, digging her fingers through the doors and shoving them open with the grinding of the door rails, light cascaded inward in beams, lighting up a dusty marble floor surrounded by darkness.

She tapped her staff, and the gem ornament in the spade lit up brightly as she entered the building.

There managed to be a decent amount of light as she walked through, despite it was the Cornerian embassy, there were brilliant statues depicting beautiful male and female figures of stone, Cerenian figures stood tall and proud, holding staffs and other primitive weapons. By just looking at them, and how similar she looked to the Cerenian girl statues, she instantly felt she had fit somewhere.

The Floor was covered in patches of dust and piles of rubble, the place was a mess.

Suddenly, she almost stumbled on one of the dust piles, there were sticks, or barbs there. "Upmff.." Krystal grunted, frustrated from her trip.

She looked down and moved her illuminating staff about, casting light across the floor when her heart became as ice by what she saw, and began to notice all around her as she stood in the middle of the marbled floor. She let out a loud, frightened gasp that echoed off the walls.

She was surrounded by dusty skeletal remains of men, women and children, sprawled out all over, the room here was filled with hundreds of them, most of which faced inward away from the entrance as she looked about, gasping and wincing in fright.

"Aiighh!..." she cried to herself. She began to notice that they were laid out as they were fleeing into the building by the dozens, maybe the hundreds, there was little space in the marble floor without Cerenian bodies laying.

"Krystal, are you okay? Keep in mind your audio was on.." Says Peppy, his relaxed old voice seemed almost soothing, shortly after hearing him her heart began to slow back down.

"Y-...you were right Peppy.." she says in a huff.

"I was right? I know I'm always right, but about what?" he asks.

"...Peppy...there are people's remains in here..." says Krystal. She heard an audible gasp from Peppy.

"Are you okay, Krystal? If you want to abort, there's no shame...few can handle such a sight..." says Peppy.

"No Peppy, for these people here I must complete my mission." says Krystal sternly.

"Copy that..." says Peppy.

"Peppy...it looks like they...were running from something, as though they saw something...they were all destroyed at once.." says Krystal.

"Based on your observations?" Peppy asks.

"Sad thing is... this should have been investigated long ago, your assessment is probably the best data we have...I'm sorry it has to be you." says Peppy.

"It's okay, Peppy.." Her voice replies with audible choking, Krystal began blinking repeatedly as she fought back tears, wanting so badly to be as tough as the others. Peppy sat at the console as did Slippy, in utter silence, Peppy's old heart sank to his stomach as he heard her voice.

"..Krystal, just find the teleporter, activate it, and get out of there..." he says.

"Yes sir." says Krystal.

She strolled on, walking down a columned corridor, wide but with a ceiling only a couple of feet above her head, the metal grated columns were bent and twisted as the ceiling was slanted and rolling in places from collapse.

The floors, ceiling, and walls were decorated in a way almost identical to the Krazoan temples on Sauria; Krystal made note of this in her mind, as did her video record, being shown to Slippy and Peppy back on Eladard. It felt surreal that the décor of the interior was Cerenian, inside a Cornerian styled building, even if it were decades older than the other buildings built by Cornerians; they usually had an angular, sleek style to them.

Before long, there was a slightly larger square room with a low teleporter, it was a grated platform beneath a mirror imaged platform, but it projected no light.

Krystal looked around before she finally spotted a plate on he floor with a plug-in hole vaguely similar to her staff.

She stood over it, and pressed the tip of her staff into it, and her staff began to glow with violet flickers of energy, sparking in through the floor, the hieroglyphs on the floor, ceiling and walls erupted into blue light, and crystals that hung from the ceiling lit up in a blue color.

Streams of light in grooves carved into the ceiling beamed toward the teleporter at the center of the ceiling and floor, lit up blue and their familiar lights began flashing on.

The floor panel lit up as well, it began to hum. Krystal drew her staff from the plug-in.

"The teleporter is activated." says Krystal.

"Good, at Corneria base there is a similar set up...guess you'd have to activate the other end yourself." says Peppy.

"Understood...I'm heading out, Peppy..." says Krystal.

Suddenly, something flashed before her eyes, and Krystal felt herself fall into a vision. An image of an old-ape man face flashed before her, harassing her in her mind, laughing in a disturbing, inhuman voice before her, the voice similar to that she heard speaking to her and Fox when they first met. Krystal pressed her hands to her head.

"Ugh!.." she growls. She felt it strange that she wasn't even frightened or surprised during the vision, as though it had happened before in a dream while she was asleep, repetitively.

"What is this?..." she thought to herself.

Suddenly, as though she had woken up from a deep sleep, still standing in the room as though time was frozen and again began ticking. She let out a breath as though she were holding it in.

"Is something wrong, Krystal?" Slippy asks.

"Nothing, it's fine. I was just on my way out." says Krystal.

"Okey dokey!" Says Slippy in the scratchy com-link.

The Arwing took off from the city ruin, and Krystal undid her helmet as she sat in the cock-pit, her other hand glued to her control sticks, her eyes hung half-open, and she was silent. As were Peppy, Slippy, and even Rob64, at least until she approached the dropship.

"Prepare to dock." Says Rob64.

"Ready!" says Krystal with a forceful raise of her voice as she hovered below the dropship.

In a sprawling metropolis on Venom, known as New Venom City, built around statues of Andross carved over ancient structures, buildings rose into the sky, and elevated bridges and roads were filled with speeding, hovering cars. The buildings were decorated by neon lights and sleazy holographic advertisements.

The city was populated largely by ape and monkey species, with other reptilian individuals walking about cheerfully in a passive casual lifestyle. News media projected on large screens depicting their smiling friendly leader Dash Bowman, meeting with other members of the Lylat System, the news stories praised him as a figure of progress in a post-war Lylat System.

In a small scrappy pub in the downtown area of the city, Falco and Katt walked in through the front door laughing, excitedly sat down at a cozy booth beside each other.

"Well, at least we know the police here ain't fast." says Falco with a chuckle.

"Fast? You drove off a bridge platform onto another, and ran inward from traffic." Katt says with a sneering look on her face, angling her smiling lips, and raising her eyebrows. Falco was clad in a black leather jacket and pants, with knee high boots, and a red headband while Katt wore a scandalous short skirt, leather boots and knuckled gloves as they sat hunched in the corner.

"Whatever, it did the trick, anything else you'd like to do tonight?" Falco asks.

"...Falco, why are suddenly so interested in what I'm doing?" Katt asks.

"C'mon Katt I've always been interested...just that there's not a whole lot going on now, and, I got time on my hands." says Falco as he raises his hands and shrugs, resting his elbow on the table.

A female chameleon stood by with a note-card, her squinted eyes watching the two of them. Falco gave her a perturbed glance and smiled cheekily.

"Oh sorry, two drinks please." says Falco as he raises two fingers.

"Jeesh, these chameleons creep me out, thought it was Leon standing there for a second." Falco mutters. Katt narrows her eyes at him and back hands him in the arm.

"Aahh, hey!" Falco complains as she whacks him.

"She's just doing her job, Falco... Now do yours, and let me in." she complains.

"Well if you really need to know...ever since the wars ended the StarFox team went back to being sorta dull, that's literally it, Katt." says Falco.

"That's not what I remember..." says Katt. "Have you heard from Fox lately?" she asks as she leans back against the booth sofa, as she flicks Falco's feathery hand, causing his finger to flinch.

"Not exactly, whenever I try to contact him he just blows us off, both me and Slippy." says Falco, as he turns his head and rests his beak in the palm of his hand.

"There's probably something wrong with him, don't you think you should talk to him?" Katt asks.

"I've tried alright?" Falco whines.

"Well try harder, he's your friend." says Katt.

"I dunno..." says Falco.

"What are the others doing lately?" Katt asks.

"I dunno..." says Falco.

"Aww, c'mon Falco, let me back in!" says Katt. "I just want to get invested in your life." says Katt.

"There's not that much to invest in." says Falco.

"I think there is, why don't we go talk to him together?" Katt asks.

"Ehh...maybe tomorrow night." says Falco.

"Do you think it's because of how distant Krystal's been?" Katt asks. "If it's rejection from someone painted blue who isn't interested in you than I totally understand his feelings." says Katt.

"Hey, it's not that I'm not interested alright?" says Falco.

Katt smiles warmly and leans in on Falco.

"You know for a slacker you sure try hard to hide yourself." says Katt.

Yeah that's just- wait..." Falco says as he narrows his red-lined eyes, looking across the pub, at a booth further down, he recognized four sitting in a booth near the window on the other side of the bar. He could see Panther's face and the back of Wolf's head among others. The same chameleon maid stood at their booth, Panther leaning out into the aisles to eye her up with a lustful grin. Falco could vaguely make out, Wolf putting his hand to his forehead in embarrassment, thankfully while the waitress didn't notice as she was scribbling away at the note-card.

"It's StarWolf...over there." says Falco as he tilts his head upward, signaling toward them.

"Huh?" says Katt as she stood up and turned her head to see, Falco takes her arm and nudges her to sit back down.

"Wait, stay down." says Falco.

"Hey, they're the ones with the bounties on their heads..." says Katt.

"I don't think that applies here on Venom.." Falco says lowly as he crouches himself down beneath the seats of the booth, as does Katt.

"New Venom...I thought they were with us now." says Katt.

"I dunno, that Dash guy never quite clicked right with me, he's...a Venomian after all." says Falco.

"That's not stereotyping them at all.." says Katt with a sarcastic tone.

"Plus StarWolf sorta has us outnumbered right now, I guess it might not be a good idea to pick a fight here." he says.

"I thought you were supposed to be a tough guy." says Katt as she smiles on Falco.

"What could they be discussing.." says Falco as he watches them. He wondered what they were talking about, it didn't seem casual that they all had dark, focused expressions on their faces whenever he looked up at them. Falco automatically came to the conclusion that they were scheming.


	2. Chapter 2The Returning Echo of Vengeance

C **hapter 2: The Returning Echo of Vengeance**

Falco stood up, followed closely by Katt, and the two slunk with their backs bent up the bar aisle, hidden by the dim bar light, before they reached the booth nearest to Wolf, Leon, Panther and Algy. They each sat in the same seat, as they could easily hear the four talking on just the other side of the cheap booth-bench.

"I think I agree with Wolf.." says Leon, as his eyes dart to the table, his arm bent over an ash tray, tapping a cigar to the glass plate to knock the ashes from it. "That kid, never has he met Andross in person, yet he thinks he knows Andross better than anyone. I don't think he realizes the kind of shoes he's trying to fill, when Andross couldn't even pull it off.." he rants on.

"The kid doesn't realize anything, he's just as convinced that Andross had any political motivation as anyone in the Empire, except he's the one in power now... he doesn't realize that Andross was just a madman." says Wolf.

Falco and Katt listen in on the conversation, how could they speak of Dash this way, have they met him? It didn't at all seem like Dash was trying to be like Andross.

"Wolf, do you think we should still go through with it?" asks Panther. Wolf glances to Panther and takes a relaxed sip from his drink. "Might as well, it's a job, and a job that promises us stable power, unless Dash screws it all up like his grand dad." says Wolf. Algy's bulbous eyes dart around the table before he slants his eyebrows slightly.

"You guys don't have much faith in the guy, that is my cousin you guys are talking about you know.." he says. "Don't you think things would be better off in the bigger picture under Venomian rule?" Wolf lets out a gruff chuckle.

"Hey now, I as much as anyone don't like the Cornerian government, don't get me wrong." he says.

"I just hope we get to bring down team StarFox once and for all before this is all over."

Katt gasps at this mention. She and Falco look to each other.

"What does he mean by that?" Katt asks.

"Doesn't sound good." says Falco. "They're definitely planning something...we...we gotta go tell Peppy!.." says Falco with a hasty whisper.

The two crawled out from the booth and scrambled down the aisle while the StarWolf team were laughing at something, and talking on loudly.

"To the the knew Empire.." says Leon as he raises a drink. The others all raise their drinks and prepare a toast.

"To team StarWolf." says Wolf as he finally raises his, the four clash their drinks before all downing them at once. Leon's eyes dart upward and across the room, before at the last second, he spots Falco walking through the doorway, the door closing behind Falco's back, all but a glimpse but Leon knew who it was.

"..Hmm..." Leon grumbles to himself as he narrows his eyes.

Wolf's ear piece began beeping, as did similar objects on Panther, Leon, and Algy.

"Looks like we've got orders, let's get going.." says Wolf as he stood up, followed by the others as they began walking on and out.

Meanwhile, back in Corneria City. Fox walked out through thin glass slide doors to his balcony, high up in one of the extravagant pillar-like buildings in Corneria city, shimmering vibrantly under the night sky.

Down below, hover-cars were darting along on the street level roads, or on the winding cat-walk like elevated bridge-works that ran like veins through the city, winding around structures, or through small tunnels in the buildings themselves, all decorated by neon lights that displayed the roadways and sidewalks.

Pedestrians walked about along the streets and on skywalk structures running between buildings, ranging widely in species and fashion sense. Stringy neon lights ran up and down all the buildings and structures, shimmering in the distance, the whole city produced a light haze against the darkness of the night sky, shining brightly; the shimmering, bustling cityscape stretched to every horizon Fox could see. Every street and walkway lined with neon light and holographic advertisement displays, shimmering and flickering in the distance.

Fox leans forward over his balcony railing, and rests his elbows on it, staring off into the distance, but not quite focusing his eyes on anything, letting everything fall into a shifting, glistening blur; all the lights, holograms and advertisements meshing into an array of dancing lights and colors.

Suddenly, he snaps into focus, looking at pedestrians, men and women walking on eagerly about their lives; a club across the street where people wore skimpy clothes, drank, and danced about like they had everything they ever wanted.

The nightclub was a smaller building, built in terraced glass roofs and arches, shimmering in neon lights, producing pulsating music Fox could faintly here from high in his apartment.

They could live so carefree, in no short part, thanks to Fox and his team as he thought. Yet they had more than Fox had. The team had all gone to their own personal lives, their careers thriving, all except Fox. His retirement brought him nothing.

Peppy had not retired like he said he would, his father, James, never retired. Fox instantly remembered the time he saw his father shortly after defeating Andross back on Venom; the first time he had seen his father since he disappeared when he was young. Did Fox really see his father? Was it real? He still wasn't completely sure. He remembered Krystal telling him that it had to have been real when he confronted her on it.

The image of his father only seemed as real as the forged encounter with an imitation of James Mccloud, invented by the Aparoid Queen. It still made Fox wonder whether his father was assimilated in the depths of space, or if he was really destroyed by Andross.

It ached in Fox's heart whenever someone mentioned his father, when he wanted to retire, he remembers it being mentioned to him that James never retired, Fox grew flustered as soon as this thought crossed his mind, and he blew air from his nostrils, shutting his eyes as he does so, trying to revert the thought from his head.

Fox lowered his head, receding into himself when suddenly he remembered Peppy telling him about what he, Slippy, Beltino, and Krystal were working on at Eladard; new Great Fox mother ship.

They all looked up to Fox, and he wanted badly to see them again, but Fox worried what they would think if they saw him this way.

He turned his head upward.

"I'll just go.." he mutters to himself.

Meanwhile, Krystal and Rob were flying through Lylat Space on their return trip to Eladard, to assess the assignment further with Peppy. Krystal again sat cross-legged, and folded her hands, her head bowed, letting her ornamented hair dangle over her short muzzle, her eyes glued shut.

She couldn't quite focus her mind for some reason, she wanted to focus on whether the warp panel that had been activated was a two-way warp, or if there were multiple destinations, she remembered using one that was a two-way system back on Sauria, but there were others that had multiple destinations.

She should have easily been able to identify it, but something else she saw there, derailed her thoughts. She couldn't even focus her telepathic mind enough to figure out exactly what it was. The bones she saw still left her a chill, as did the strange vision she had, as though the dead there were trying to tell her something, combined with her own knowledge.

Suddenly, the voice she remembered sounded familiar, even if she had only heard his voice once or twice.

"Andross?.." she mutters to herself.

Rob64 swivels at his waist away from the control panel toward Krystal as he detected minor speech from her.

"My censors indicate that your heart is beating irregularly, is there something wrong?" Rob asks. Krystal jumped awake, her cyan eyes glinting open.

"I'm okay, Rob, I'm just thinking about our mission...we'll have it figured out when we get back with Peppy.." she says to him.

"Any and all requested assistance are part of my set of directives. If requested, my assistance is at your disposal." Says Rob64.

"Thank you, Rob." says Krystal. Rob64 swivels back to the control panel and returned to his work.

Suddenly, an ominous presence begins to float by, as though a frigid cold wind blowing through her fur. Krystal seizes up with a quiet gasp, it was another presence she was familiar with.

She jolted to her feet, Rob64 lifts his head in a minor reaction, making mechanical note of her action, as she walks to a window, and folds her fingers together as she closes her eyes, searching the cold empty space outside the ship through her telepathy.

"Hmm?" She mumbles to herself, just as distinct radiating brain-wave signals began to appear to her. They were definitely all too familiar. It was StarWolf, all of them, and one more she hadn't met. Wolf, Leon, and Panther she already knew. Despite having worked with them during the Aparoid and Anglar wars, she still felt them dangerous.

"Rob?" Krystal asks. Rob64 raises his head to face her, giving his attention. "Can you enhance the radar, and scan the area?" she asks.

"Scanning...scan complete." Says Rob64.

"Four plasma-reactor engine trails detected, distance: one thousand-ninety." Says Rob64, as he displays their long-range radar on the main screen; there was a clear cluster of trajectory trails beside the ship.

"Where are they going?" Krystal asks.

"Assessing... plasma trail trajectory, parallels with ours, likely destination: Eladard." Rob64 says plainly. Krystal gasps.

"We need to hurry, Rob. Something is wrong."

Krystal walks hastily back toward their computer console and presses down on a large rectangular button on the long-range communications console.

"Peppy, this is Krystal, I foresee danger headed your way, for Eladard! Over." she says, then waits, listening to empty static. "Peppy, do you read me?" she asks. "Peppy?...Slippy?" she continues. Receiving no answer.

"Signal failed to send, there is an error on receiver's end." Says Rob64.

"Rob, for Eladard, full cruising speed!" Krystal orders, motioning at him with her hand.

Rob64 nods his head stiffly, and pushes a switch-lever forward all the way, and the ship makes a sudden lurch forward, blasting on through space with its after burners producing a blue trail, disappearing into the depths of space with a distant twinkle.

They soon arrive at Eladard, roughly an hour later, coming in from their cruising jump, the desolate, ringed world coming into view. Krystal ran from the bridge to her Arwing in the puny ship's launch bay, Rob64 remained on the ship while Krystal launched from its hangar.

The two spacecraft flew on and entered the atmosphere of Eladard, Krystal only grew more nervous as she still hadn't heard back from Peppy. She could soon see their base up ahead; shrouded in smoke, her heart pangs in and is suddenly pounding in her chest.

"Peppy, Slippy, anyone, does anyone read me?" she says shrilly through her communications line.

Rob64 lands the dropship in a circular area in the air field, Krystal lands closer to the entrance of the main building facility. Massive, bulbous factory structures riddled by enormous pipes and protrusions hung in the distance just at the horizon; most of them crumbled a bit; Eladard lay at the farthest edge of the yellow star solar system with a slow orbit, causing it to sit just in the middle of the Binary Lylat System, during the Lylat War; Andross had captured the planet and used it for his factories to construct his terrible war machines, leaving the planet so densely polluted; the planet's vibrant rings were narrowly visible in the dark, reddish gray sky.

The base was ravaged, riddled with a few burning craters, and a few crashed Cornerian fighters, the base was decorated by blast marks and holes, and it was quiet, it was a relatively small facility though. As Krystal approached the main building, she cautiously looked around, and saw that the communication towers were all destroyed, seemingly by aircraft.

She approached a doorway and drew a charge-blaster from her silver backpack concealed by her cape, she rests herself up against the wall beside the door, hit the button beside the door and it slid open with a hiss, she spins on her heel and aims inward into the building; her weapon aimed inward in front of her. She takes a few steps in and aims around with her weapon into the silver paneled corridor interior of the building.

Along the walls were glimmering streams of lights moving through the station along the walls and ceiling, light producing panels, and vents.

There were also alarm lights, still turning within a dome, and flashing red, the red and yellow-orange flashing lights reflected on the walls, and conflicted with Krystal's dark blue color palette as she walked on through, in a lighting constantly changing, dancing the shadows about; the movement made her anxious, as though there was someone hiding around a bend.

She ran down the corridor, trailed by her swaying tail and cascading blue cape; turning at a dime, making a combat stance with her feet; and panning about with her blaster tucked tightly to her shoulder, her eye staring down the sights. The corridors were horizontally rectangular at the wider areas, diagonally rectangular at the narrowest, but ribbed with beams that stood slightly angled outward all throughout.

She came around a corner and down a ramp into a slightly declined area of the station, to find a few Cornerian soldiers strewn across the floor, burn marks from laser blasts decorated their armor, beneath which were cauterized wounds. Krystal telepathically scanned each of them, to see if anyone were alive.

The walls here were tattered by blast marks, black burns in the metal, smoke and steam bellowing from all over, rubble and debris littered the floors between bodies, the lights were all blasted out leaving the area slightly dark.

She closes her eyes and shakes her head, it was a shame, brave Cornerian men and women fallen to someone they weren't even supposed to fight.

"Wolf...how could you do this?.." she curses to herself. Suddenly, she felt the desperate crying brainwaves of a Cornerian soldier who was alive, she turned and walked a ways further in and turned to find a dog soldier sprawled out on the ground, laying on his side, curling his arm over his stomach.

She knelt down and took him by his shoulders, and shoved him up against the wall so he was sitting up slightly, she tilted his helmet upward and looked on him. He couldn't even look at her he was so dazed, so she put her hand on his shoulder.

"Help will come." she says, before she got to her feet and walked on by.

She came around another corner further in to find a few more wounded Cornerian soldiers, they jumped at the sight of her at first, but recognized who she was immediately and just looked on as she walked by, doing little to react to her.

Some however gave her a glare. Behind the looks on their faces, Krystal could hear what they were thinking of her, feel what they feel about her, she became more uneasy. She had been working with them for awhile now with Peppy, Slippy and Beltino, she wasn't universally popular among them, but it definitely seemed worse now, after this attack.

Before long she finally went through a slide door, to find Peppy flat on his back on the floor behind a desk and a few smashed computer consoles and holograms in a large rounded ceiling decorated by screens lining it all around in a circle, and rounded computer consoles surrounding an elevated area in the middle of the room. Krystal gave an audible gasp and scrambled to meet Peppy.

"Peppy!" she cries, standing over him, she got to her knees to look on him, he responded immediately; he was a tough old hare, Krystal was impressed.

"Urggh..." he groans as he rolls to his side as he hears Krystal' sweet, frail little voice call his name. Suddenly, Beltino climbs out from under a nearby desk as he recognizes her voice; he had an anguished look on his usually cheerful face, his eyes bent inward, clear in his squarish glasses.

"Peppy.." Krystal says again softly. "Where's Slippy?" she asks frantically, glancing at Beltino and Peppy back and forth momentarily.

Peppy shakes his head, and puts his hand up against his forehead, causing his long ears to bounce against Krystal's head; being shoved out of the way by her hair-draped cranium.

"Ugh, give me a second, Krys..." he complains. He had a bruise on the side of his head, and scuffing down the same side of his face, and there was a blast wound on his portly side. Krystal touches her hand near it. "Rgghmmm!" Peppy barks as he weakly shoves her hand.

"I'm fine!" he complains. Krystal pulls away. "..Sorry Krystal.." he says. "I've had worse injuries so don't worry about me.." he says. "Slippy...they took him.." says Peppy. "Who? StarWolf?" Krystal asks shrilly.

"Yes.." says Peppy as his accent and gruff tone of voice begins to sound more normal, but with weariness in his old heart and lungs. Beltino got to his feet and dusts himself off shakily, Krystal looked on him to see he was unharmed.

"Beltino?" Krystal asks.

"They took Slippy, they took my son!" he says, his old voice shaking up and down. "StarWolf...they just...came and attacked, they entered the base and we didn't stand a chance after they first wiped out our air guard." he explains.

"Did they say anything?" Krystal asks.

"No, we tried to reason with them, but they wouldn't listen to us at all, they just came in, and took Slippy.." he explains.

Suddenly, Krystal senses someone coming, she turns.

"Peppy, Beltino..stay down.." she says worriedly with a shaky shrill voice. Krystal turns and aims her blaster through one of the other doorways leading into this circular situation room.

Suddenly, Falco and Katt came in, followed by Rob64. Krystal lowered her weapon, relieved at their sight.

"Falco!" Krystal cries.

"Quit whining we're right here!" Falco complains in a reply, in his usual lazy yet blunt tone of voice.

"It was StarWolf...they have Slippy." Krystal explains.

"What? I figured they would go after Beltino for his research if they were going after any tech guy." says Falco.

"That's what I figured too.." says Krystal. "But Beltino is here and so is Peppy, they took Slippy I don't know why.." says Krystal. Peppy stood up, and raises his head, causing his long ears to bounce a bit as well.

"It was because Slippy can encrypt, and de-crypt data analysis algorithms...and they're after something he and Beltino had developed..." says Peppy.

"StarWolf? Why would they need him to do something like that? It doesn't quite sound like their type of plunder." Krystal questions.

"You guys, you've got to save him!" says Peppy. Beltino looks up to Peppy, adjusting his glasses in surprise.

"I'm worried about my son, but shouldn't we wait for more help to arrive?" Beltino asks.

"There's no time!" says Peppy. "I've listened to them talk when they blasted their way in here, they're planning something." he explains, he looks to Falco, Krystal and Katt standing before him.

"You guys get going right away, I'll call for Fox and call to rally the Cornerian Fleet, I'll also send for your help, someone will meet you at their base, I'm betting they're still at Sargasso." says Peppy.

"Wait hold on there gramps.." Falco mutters. "Katt and I ran into StarWolf just a short while ago, they're definitely planning something we- He is cut short by Peppy.

"We can figure this all out later, right now you guys gotta get out there and save Slippy!" Peppy orders.

"Alright Alright!.." Falco turns to face Katt who had a weary look on her face. "You guys ready?" Falco asks.

"Yeah...we can take my ship, and Rob64 can help us." says Krystal.

Falco, Katt and Krystal rush through the corridors to the base's hangar bay, each one takes a headset and puts it over their back and tops of their heads, a small transparent lens would pop out beside their left or right eyes.

"I have new generation Arwings developed by Slippy prepped and ready to go!" says Peppy through their scratchy headset.

Falco makes a graceful flip into an Arwing cockpit, grabbing the lip of the Arwing's cockpit with his hand, and seating himself comfortably. Krystal, leaps and takes hold of the lip, and climbs in quietly.

Katt turns away from the Arwings; and spies a Cornerian strike fighter; a slightly smaller fin-shaped star fighter with two dorsal fins on each side of the fuselage. It also had a silvery blue color to it, with green highlights on the wingtips, and green stripes in the middle of each wing. It was the exact same model she had when she met the StarFox team on Zoness during the Lylat War.

"Hmm, still needs a good paint job, but I guess I'll take it." Katt mumbles to herself, she climbs into the aircraft, and the three pilots start their engines, each fighter, one by one begins to hum and growl with energy.

Debris and dust around them began to flutter about as the three aircraft lifted from the ground; the thruster engines in the backs light up pink or red, and the three fighters launch from the hangar bay, veering up and out of the base hangar.

Rob64 launched as well with their bulky Cornerian dropship, joining them as they launched into space at full cruising speed, they launched out into space headed for Sargasso; which wasn't too far away as they quickly cruised across a small middle area of the binary Lylat System.

Meanwhile on Corneria, Fox rushed through traffic in a hover car headed for the Cornerian surface control base as he sped along on the long highway bridges, the bridge ran on across an area of open water until he reached another mainland, where it was more flat, there were more city buildings here and there in rows along the way surrounded by lush green grass, and mountains on the distant horizon, Fox began approaching the military zone, driving passed radar dishes, and landing pads for fighters.

A few K-class Cornerian fighters flew overhead; slim and tinted green/brownish gray, with slim angular wings, and green tips on the ends of the wings, and one green stripe going up the middle of the fuselage.

Up ahead, there was a grayish building built like a giant metallic rock rising from the ground, launch bays with open gates as well. In this area of the city there were only land strips and military-use roads running between them, and a few pillar-like buildings as well in this wide flat open area.

As Fox approached the massive building in his hover car, he is stopped at a gate, where a Cornerian dog-soldier stood guard with a blaster at his side; a blue shield went up in front of him and Fox came to a stop, the soldier approached the side of his vehicle but jumped in surprise as soon as he recognized Fox, Fox raises his eyebrows in slight surprise as well.

"Oh uhh, go ahead, sir!" he says excitedly, stopping to make a hardy solute to Fox, before stepping back to the gate hut, and hitting the button to release the shield; the shield goes down, and the path is clear. Fox gives him a solute as well, and smiles awkwardly before he drove on.

Fox drove into a parking area, stopped, and leaped out through his open canopy, and ran down a busy corridor as fast as he could.

Fox soon arrived in a large slightly darker room surrounded by strategic computer consoles, and round hologram projectors, there were a few open spaces near the large windows as well that stretched from floor to ceiling in squared panels. There stood General Pepper, in his bright classic red uniform.

"General!" Fox shouts as he ran in and skidded to a stop on his boots; Fox stood there in his full uniform. Wearing his green uniform, and his gray-white plated jacket with the sleeves rolled up, wearing the fingerless gloves, and armor padding on his boots, knees, and shoulders.

General Pepper turned with surprise in his sulky old-dog face.

"Fox!?" he exclaims.

"General, I just got a call from Peppy, there's something going on!" Fox says in surprise. "Oh and uhh; by the way I decided not to retire, sir!" says Fox in an anxious rush.

Pepper makes a slight turn and adjusts his hat, he draws his sunglasses from a pocket and puts them over his face.

"Well Fox...that's good to hear...at a time we couldn't need you more." he says with weariness in his already shaky old voice.

"Pepper, what's happening?" Fox asks frantically. General Pepper takes a step and faces parallel to Fox, staring at the wall, he bows his head with a drop, opening his jaw as well to speak.

"We lost contact with all those stationed on Eladard a couple of hours ago, we fear that it may be StarWolf on the move, again." says Pepper. "We've attempted to contact New Venom about the matter...however...we have not yet had any official response from them." he explains.

"Something's clearly on, General." says Fox. "C'mon, General. Give me an Arwing and I can go out and see what's up!" General Pepper raises his head to face Fox when suddenly they heard a ringing coming from one of the consoles.

"Sir, incoming transmission from Eladard base!" says one of the Cornerian engineers at the computer.

"Put it on the main screen." Pepper orders as he and Fox walk to the center of the room.

The main screen hums and glows as a live-image of Peppy and Beltino appear.

"Peppy!" Fox exclaims.

"General, I've got more bad news, we fell under attack, and it was StarWolf...they came, they wrecked the place...and took Slippy." says Peppy.

"That's just what we suspected, Peppy...we're just glad at least some of you are in one piece." says General Pepper.

"It's more than just that general...it's not just StarWolf, they're up to something big, given what little evidence we have of their motives, we're not certain at all what it is, but it could be very bad, General." says Peppy.

General Pepper makes a turn.

"Peppy, is the Great Fox Three ready to deploy?" he asks. Peppy audibly groans on the other side of the scratchy comlink. "It's technically complete thanks to Slippy and Beltino's short work, but we haven't had a test run of any of its flight systems." says Peppy.

"Consider this the test run, than." Pepper orders. "Get yourselves ready right away!" he adds.

Pepper turns to Fox and motions his arm with a forward point of his finger.

"As for you, Fox, you are deployed via Arwing immediately; I'll need you to rendezvous with the new Great Fox as quick as you can, and we can go from there, as for reinforcements to the rescue team..." Pepper makes a turn back to the computer console.

"What about me, sir?" Fox pesters.

"We're too far away, you'll never get there in time even with a warp, but...I know of some forces within that area of space that would be of some use..." says Pepper.

"Pepper, its StarWolf we're talking about, no offense but standard military force would get eaten alive!" Fox exclaims. Pepper turns to Fox, and chuckles somewhat.

"Fox, your team isn't the only mercenary ace unit in the Lylat System, I'm sure you remember.." says Pepper as he taps away at some controls.

He hits the comlink button and looks up at a main screen.

"StarWing squadron; come in, this is General Pepper of the Cornerian Army!" says General Pepper. There was a brief static silence until they heard a few bleeps from the screen and something picking up.

"We here you general, awaiting orders?" says a rather composed, high-pitched uppity toned female voice.

"Wait hold-up, we're getting paid extra for this right? Especially considering the short notice.." says a sassier, gruff female voice.

Pepper groans. "Yes yes, deploy immediately to sargasso; there's a small squadron in-route there, and they won't last without your support!" says Peppy.

"We're on it, general!" says the gruff voice, and it cuts out immediately after.

"Wait hold on!" Says Pepper as he stretches his hand. "Ughh..." he groans.


	3. Chapter3: Reunion and Rescue

**Chapter 3: Reunion and Rescue.**

The Cornerian dropship, strike fighter and two Arwings sped through space, trailed by blue streams of light.

 **"Approaching Sargasso space station; preparation is advised."** Says Rob64.

"We're almost there, I'm betting we'll be outnumbered." says Krystal.

"Great.." Falco mutters.

"-And I'm betting you guys won't last long." says the gruff-tone female voice coming in from their scanning communication line.

"Huhh?" Falco mutters.

Suddenly, a large Cornerian battle-carrier comes in from a warp jump, appearing as a twinkle of light in the distance of space, and then comes in with a sweeping zoom. It was was a little smaller than the Great Fox, and featured two large box-like arms on each side of the bridge. Each box structure had folding doors and flashing lights decorating the ship.

Suddenly, on their comlink monitors, two new faces appeared; a lynx with pointed pen-tip tufts on the tops of her ears and a tough, mean smile on her face, and a prim and proper cocker-spaniel with brushed tufted ears with red bows in them.

Falco raises his eyebrows a bit in surprise that he recognized them.

"You guys again?" he asks. Katt scrunches her lips and raises an eyebrow, wondering how Falco already knows them.

"We heard from the general that you guys need help!" says the cocker-spaniel.

"We also heard you needed assistance in attacking the Sargasso bay to help your friend or whatever." the lynx adds.

"Your friend said we already needed help.." says Falco.

"Yeah I know, your point?" Miyu replies. Katt scoffs and chuckles.

"Katt? Hey c'mon, help me out here." Falco complains.

"Falco...you walked right into that yourself.." Katt says with a chuckle. Krystal mumbles and groans.

"You guys, this isn't the time, we need to help Slippy!" she says.

"Oh yeah about that, what did you guys have planned? Your 'fleet' wouldn't stand a chance, you'd all get blown to bits the moment you came in." says Miyu.

"Peppy did say he was sending help...I thought they would send Fox or something." says Krystal.

"Well, you guys got something even better so... ya ready?" Miyu says with a snippy grimace.

"Umm, yes..." Krystal replies weakly.

 **"Engaging fleet-synchronized attack mode, ready for movement."** says Rob64.

"Alright, synchronize your ships with ours, we'll all go in at once, that's our best chance." says Fay.

"Oh, by the way, I'm Fay Spaniel, and that's my colleague; Miyu Lynx!" says Fay. Falco nods. "Yeah, that's great. We good to go?" he asks.

"Yup!" says Miyu. The Cornerian battle-carrier opens its front doors and two interceptor variant Arwings launch from the hangar bay.

"Oh...nice.." says Falco as his eyes follow the twin Arwings as they launch from their hangar bay; that featured a split fuselage just front of the cockpit canopy; Miyu's was a standard blue color for the shoulder structures, and Fay's was painted gold.

"I want one..." Krystal mutters to herself.

"Can't it's copyright-" Miyu begins as she looks at Krystal through their visual com-link feed.

"Oh wow... she _is_ pretty." Miyu says with a snide chuckle.

"Um...thanks.." Krystal replies shakily. Fay giggles as she taps at her control settings; an extra keyboard set she had rigged to her Arwing cockpit.

"Oh yeah, sorry just gimme a sec, I need to set up the auto-pilot and auto-turret systems before we leave." says Fay.

"Alright, should we get going; speaking of whom?" Katt asks.

"Yeah, let's go." says Miyu. "Fay? If you mind?" Fay asks.

"Okay I got it ready." says Fay as she taps a larger key on her keyboard with a loud audible click, suddenly in front of their group of ships, a visible indent in space formed in front of them, and morphed into a tunnel as though in space; one by one the group of five star fighters boosted forward into it, followed by the Cornerian dropship, and lastly the Cornerian battle-carrier.

Meanwhile, in Sargasso; with its four quad foot-mounted thrusters was continuing its movement from the Sargasso space region; the fiery far face of Macbeth visible in the distance; a large portion of the planet was a burning volcanic region, while another portion of the planet on the far side was of rocky terrain, rich with various raw precious metal materials.

The ship's thrusters could hardly budge the massive object; it was surrounded by a small fleet of Venomian ships; mostly small, yellowish frigate class ships, and fighters fluttering about the asteroids in small swarms.

Slippy walked down the crude, rusty, dusty bulky metal corridor as Wolf and Leon walked a short ways behind him, two Venomian ruffian soldiers walked ahead; mostly of a monkey-like species, they had on crude space suits now decorated by patches and seals of the New Venom regime, and carried crude blaster weapons in their hands. The metal corridor was irregularly warped in places as though built out of metal boxes and beams, as was the ceiling; all around them were circuitry systems, flickering lights, hissing pipe and valve systems, the floors, walls and ceiling were also lined with crude irregular paneling that seemed like it was thrown together sloppily, yet came together in a functional way.

The floors and ceiling were also occasionally lined by grates and window panels that revealed the space outside; distant celestial clouds and nebulae swirling in the cold, beautiful vastness of space, and countless shimmering stars filling every visible stretch visible through the window; also lined as though it were made up of countless tiny hexagons only visible if you focused your vision directly on them.

Noticeably, the floor seemed to shudder and shake joined by a metallic thump with each step Wolf took, making Slippy desire to hustle his feet forward as though to escape being stepped on. Wolf was menacingly heavy and brutish even when he walked with a relaxed pace, even Leon looked imposing, but he didn't quite shake the floor with each step. He more so seemed to creep along silently with each graceful step.

Slippy was lead to a small hexagonal cell, the ruffians shoved him in, and several metal grate bars slid down and began flickering with a bluish glow.

"Aeeghh!" Slippy gasps as he was thrown to the cold, hard metal floor of the prison.

"Well, don't go nowhere.." says Wolf as he and Panther make a turn to leave the room.

"Wait, aren't you guys gonna like...ask me something? Why did you guys even bring me here anyway!?" Slippy bursts in a panic.

"You better quit your croakin', froggy; if you'd be patient everything will naturally make sense...or I could just blast you, I don't have orders against doing you any harm.." says Wolf.

"Wait...orders!?" Slippy asks.

"I thought I was supposed to be the one asking questions.." says Wolf.

Suddenly, a ruffian storms in and the door slides open. "Sir, a small group of Cornerian ships are closing in from warp!" he says frantically, panting to catch his breath, his glowing visor has a glistening red color, its light has a faint shudder with movement similar to Wolf's eye visor covering the side of his face his eye-patch once did, but still revealing a scar scraped across that side of his face.

"What!?" Wolf grunts hastily as he makes a turn and acknowledges his ruffian.

"Raise the alarm and get all hands to battle stations!" Wolf spits the order with a fanged grimace on his face. He then makes a hasty turn back to Slippy, grunting in his breath before closing his lip with a relaxed exhale from his nostrils.

"Looks like your friends are already here, today's your lucky day, Slip." he says.

He turns and runs down the corridor.

"How did they know we were here?" Leon asks confusedly.

"Pretty sure Dash somehow got us pardoned, the Cornerians didn't know we were here for the longest time, and the people in charge of the Macbeth mining operation never liked Corneria so...put that together.." says Wolf.

"How did they get after us so quick?" Panther asks.

"Guess some of them happened to be in the right place at the right time..." says Wolf.

"This is stupid, how will we keep our war secret under wraps now!?" Algy asks.

"Guess we'll start the party earlier than planned.." says Leon.

"Probably.. Not that I'm not a fan." says Wolf.

Falco, Krystal, Miyu, Fay and Katt flew in a formation with Falco upfront, the Cornerian battle-carrier to their left, and their dropship to their right with Rob64 at the controls, as the squadron flew through the misty, swirling mass of subspace while in warp, shimmering repeated images spritzing about with each slight movement of their spacecraft, as though light itself was troubled to keep up.

"Alright, get ready!" says Fay, as she taps at the controls on a keypad beside her arm in her cockpit, the commands typed being beamed to their battle-carrier, suddenly, space opened up like a hole, and they flew through.

In a split second, the ships flew in from a distant twinkle in the black infinite horizon of space; ahead of them, they blurred up with blinding speed to the Sargasso space station, protected by about three small yellow Venomian frigates, and a single Venomian bulky Venomian carrier.

First the Miyu and Fay in their interceptor variant Arwings, then Katt in a Strike fighter, than Krystal and Falco arrive in a flash in their standard Arwings. Finally, the dropship and battle-carrier jump in from the warp, the diminutive fleet charged forward.

"There they are!" says Wolf as he looks out through a command screen. "To the fighters." he says to Algy, Panther and Leon. They race off to get to their craft.

Meanwhile, the Venomian ships began rotating themselves around and thrusting toward their small challengers along with several swarms of ruffian space fighters.

The Battle-carrier as per Fay's command, began firing toward the nearest large Venomian ship from its auto turrets, a small frigate that drew nearer. The battle-carrier fired a few long, green beams of light that shimmered in the darkness of space as they beam out toward the frigate that closed in, returning fire with an array of red and yellow flickering shots, that burst into flashes and sparks as they struck the exterior of the battle-carrier.

The landing craft piloted by Rob64 was also equipped with two turrets that he was able to operate by remote, by connecting himself to the ship's interface itself as he stood at the helm of the ship, both his arms morphed into rods that could connect to the sophisticated structure of the control desk before him.

The landing craft was a bit larger than the small aircraft, but was dwarfed beside the battle-carrier as the two boldly fluttered forward, firing small beams into space as the enemies drew nearer.

Falco, Katt, Krystal, Miyu and Fay maintained a formation as they flew beside their craft, soon they fell under fire as well; the five fighters loosened from one another as they began weaving up and down, side to side, tilting their craft, or performing barrel rolls as the enemy's laser fire began to harass them.

Fay looked on as the frigate drew nearer, the green beams of light blasting away at the top as it flew in at an angle below the ship, but still not doing much for sufficient damage.

"Alright we need to break formation, but we can't let those fighters or that frigate get too close to our large ships, neither of those ships are built for close proximity combat!" Fay exclaims shrilly in their com link.

"Right..." says Miyu as she flew beside Fay. "Fay, you stay with the ship, Falco and Katt, you go after that fighter swarm, Krystal and I will take care of that frigate." Miyu says sternly through their comlink.

"Set all fighters to all range mode!" Miyu commands, and one by one each Arwing slowly spreads their wings to their widest setting, the front and shoulder mounted laser cannons pop out from compartments, and the shoulder structures on the Arwings open up and lock into place. Katt's aircraft locks its laser cannons into position as well as its structure makes a few minor shifts as well as it switches to all-range combat mode.

"Got it!" says Falco as he tilts his craft and breaks away, followed closely by Katt as she too rolls gracefully as she follows beside Falco.

"You just watch your tail feathers, Falco.." Katt mutters, directed at Falco as she joined him, the two boosted forward with large blue blasts of their after-burners trailing behind their crafts as they charge forward.

Fay flies upward in a U-turn and twirls through the air as her interceptor begins to fly about the two large ships as they moved forward slowly.

Miyu boosts forward, expecting Krystal to immediately follow, Krystal takes a hefty, nervous breath before pressing the boost button on her controls and thrusting forward as well, trailed by a blue stream of light as she quickly caught up to Miyu's lighter, faster interceptor; flying side by side it was however clear that her aircraft was significantly thinner and more frail in appearance than the standard Arwing.

"C'mon Krystal say something that isn't all timid and submissive, you gotta have some fight in there somewhere!" Miyu says with a stern orderly voice. The words hit Krystal in the lungs, and Krystal feels her fingers grow twitchy.

"I'm **fine**!" Krystal says with a hint of forced focus, and frustration in her tone.

"Alright take it easy, just wanted to make sure you were in the mood to fight.." Miyu replies in a slightly more relaxed tone than earlier.

"Get ready, here they come!" says Miyu as the two star fighters arched rightward, veering around side by side as laser blasts from the frigate and its few escort fighters begin to zing out at them; Miyu and Krystal being lit up by the flashing light of laser blasts passing over them. The two hold their blast buttons down, and begin producing charge shots; a red orb of destructive energy materializes on the tip of Krystal's Arwing, little red streams in grooves along the front fuselage of her Arwing resonate like tiny rivers flushing energy to the firing mechanism of the charge shot.

Miyu's Arwing produced a flickering web of green energy between the two ends of her split fuselage at the very front, it begins flashing and fluttering, lighting up the shiny fuselage of her craft with the green energy.

"Alright let's go!" Miyu shouts as they both boost forward as the ruffian fighters flew forward to meet them; Miyu barrel-rolls her craft; deflecting a few laser bolts as they ding off her shielded wings that produced a whorl of shimmering feathery light as they slapped the bolts aside, she fires her charge shot into the locked-on center Venomian fighter of the small swarm, and the green bulb of light homes in on its target and bursts like a sparkling bubble; blasting the fighter to bits in a flash of sparks and shimmers.

In that split second the blast expands and consumes all but one fighter that was thrown aside by the released flare of the explosion, and the spaceborne debris of its obliterated comrades. Miyu angles her craft and fires a few twin blasts, blasting away at the helpless remaining fighter and reducing it to sparks and shrapnel flying out in all directions from its shimmer of fire.

Krystal fires her red shot; locked on the mid-section of the frigate, it explodes with a red flash, blasting away cruelly at some of the upper and middle structure of the ship, causing some of its lights to flicker from the damage, the ship gives a slight shudder, and a few more ruffian fighters arched around after her and began firing.

Krystal hits the boost and rushes forward to dodge their laser bolts and she tilts her craft; her upside angled to meet them as she peers upward through her cockpit canopy, she pulls up and flies forward and fires single green bolts of light, a few shots hit one fighter, cutting away at bits of its exterior before hitting the fuselage, and it bursts in a flash, she flies in a rounded curve as the remaining two flew away, and she veered in behind, gunning down another in two shots, hitting its engines, and throwing the ruffian fighter into a spiral, leaking flickering glints of greenish fire, before exploding, its fuselage splitting to pieces.

Krystal begins to harass the last one as she chased it.

"Krystal, go after the frigate, I can take care of these fighters!" Miyu commands, Krystal flares her nostrils and jiggles at her controls, making a U-turn and ending with a boost as she flies off toward the frigate; it fires its main cannon, and Krystal easily zooms to the side to dodge its beam; it's red light lighting up red against the side of her silvery white fuselage.

The last fighter begins to chase her, when suddenly it is blown away as Miyu flies in to meet Krystal, the two fire charge shots, the green and red orbs of light burst against the side of the ship, producing a pair of sparkling explosions; unlike puffs of fire and smoke when in atmosphere; the explosions seemed less red and orange in color, but more white and blue, and they also produced rather an array of sparks and shrapnel never arched to the gravity as it wasn't there; everything seemed to spur off in whatever direction it was thrown.

Krystal and Miyu each open fire, and their dotting flares of green light punish the ship. Krystal goes for the top mounted turret as it tries to turn to meet them, in just two or three shots it bursts open and blazes away; they can visibly see the operator thrown into space helplessly; catapulted by explosive decompression.

"Not bad, Krys." Miyu says with a sneer visible on her face in their comlink screen.

Krystal passes overhead and Miyu beneath the ship; the operators on the ships bridge panic as they see the two Arwings swing by at high speed, not making a noise in the deathly silence of space.

The other bottom mounted turret fires a red beam, and a few side mounted turrets fire weak, yellowish laser blasts as the two Arwings dart off against the starry blackness of space, roll to their side, and perform U-turns side by side, swinging around an asteroid for cover, the laser bolts pounding a few asteroids producing puffs of debris fluttering off into space from the asteroids' surfaces.

The rugged surface of the asteroids were blurred by speed as the Arwings veered around them, visible through their canopy windows.

Suddenly, they each charge up their charge shots, and fire multiple times; pelting the ship, blasting away at its shields and armor. The ship began to lurch downward as its lights flickered on and off, suddenly the mid-section of the ship burst open with carpets of sparks and blops of oxygen being thrown into space in all directions, the ships middle structure shattered and the explosions spread all throughout, the ship lit up in yellow and blue as it split to pieces; massive flickering chunks began to float off, trailed by clouds of debris; the two Arwings passed through as the ship was reduced to a cloud of mixed debris, and glowing shrouds of energy.

The two Arwings darted toward the station as laser fire began to reach out in shimmering streaks at them.

Meanwhile, Falco and Katt both charged toward a swarm of fighters, Falco repeatedly charged and fired charged shots, blasting at groups of two or three or more at a time with their devastating splash damage force, while Katt fired her laser cannons, and fired small missiles, the two arched in different directions as they flew about in the swarm, gunning down one after another.

Falco armed his twin laser cannons and began firing wildly as he makes a sharp turn, creating a whorl of green laser blasts zinging out all around, hitting a few fighters, sending them tumbling through space, spitting sparks, or exploding instantaneously.

Falco barrel rolls as he fought, deflecting laser shots with ease.

"Man these guys can't do nothin'!" he complains as he prepares a charge shot.

"Don't say anything too early just yet, Falco, I've seen you and your fights with the team." says Katt. Falco gives her a disgruntled mumble.

"Yeah...whatever.." he says.

Suddenly, Falco feels his craft shakes as a trio of Venomian fighters behind him began pelting him, Falco barrel-rolls repeatedly to protect himself, producing whirlwinds of energy trailing behind him along with the thin blue after burner plasma stream; deflecting laser bolts, but still taking hits, harassing his shields.

"Damn!" he curses.

Suddenly, Katt veers in from in front of Falco and turns herself, flying straight at him and passed him at an angle, in that split second, she tilts her craft so their cockpit canopies come within view of each other, Falco looks up and over at her's, and can clearly see Katt look over at him, giving him a smirk and a thumbs-up, along with a wink. She flies straight at the three fighters and fires; blasting one to bits with a small pop of flames and sparks, in that instant, Falco makes a somersault maneuver and shoots another down as it came into view; the last flew off in another direction in confusion, Katt and Falco than flew side by side and mercilessly pursued.

Their glinting green shots zinged all over behind the fighter as it hits its boost. The Ruffian inside panics at his controls, he looks back through his canopy.

"Sir, where are you!?" he cries in his comlink, I can't- suddenly, he is suddenly cut off and blown to bits.

Meanwhile, StarWolf began launching from the hangar bays of their station, and they arched around to meet each other, flying in a four-wing formation.

"Damn, we've lost a good chunk of our fighters!.." Wolf grunts.

"How's about we fry these uninvited visitors and their ships? That will teach them, we can't let them escape after this.." Leon hisses as he clenches at his controls.

"Easy Leon, don't worry we've got them. Leon, Algy? Why Don't you take down that ship, Panther and I can take care of some of the fighters, this won't take long." he says.

"Hmm...I guess it'll look like a nice tally on my Wolfen." says Leon. Algy blinks and jiggles at his controls.

"Well, guess we can have the honors of destroying the first Cornerian capitol ship of the war, that'll be nice indeed." says Algy as he and Leon tilt their craft and boost, flying off toward the distant carrier and landing ship.

Wolf and Panther. continue straight on toward where the swarm battle was taking place; he could see where one of his frigates was destroyed, and the other two were still on their way.

"Bulk cannon frigates T15 and T106, cease fire, we'll handle this!" Wolf orders through his comlink.

"Thanks boss!" they hear a ruffian monkey exclaim on the other end, as his face comes up on the screen, his voice sounded stifled and incredibly relieved. He had visible sweat on his forehead as well under his helmet visor.

"Just stay out of our way!" Wolf orders sternly but relaxed.

"S-sir yes sir!" he exclaims, and the comlink portrait screen vanishes.

A few bulkier bomber-class ruffian fighters flew in, and launched clusters of missiles toward the battle carrier, as it lazily fired toward them with laser cannons, Fay flew in and around, and tapped away at settings on her fighter, producing a charge shot, that suddenly, morphs into a flat rounded plate of green light, suddenly, it spurts off a series of thin beams stretching outward.

The mesh of thin green beams destroys most of the missiles, producing some splash damage as flares thwarted others in the miniature chaos produced.

Fay charges it again and repeats, destroying the last of them, a few darting thin beams of her scattering charge shot knocks down one of the bombers as the other two turned back.

"Ha!" Fay shouts with pride.

"What?" Miyu asks.

"It worked, I told you it would!" says Fay with excitement and pride in her squeaky whimpered voice.

"I.. never doubted it would." says Miyu with a raise of her eyebrow. Suddenly, something on her radar began flashing.

"We've got new bogies, judging by their shape this can't be good!" says Miyu as she glances about her comlink screens, Krystal few along side her; she looked up and around through her canopy, darting her eyes about, she then closed her eyes and searched the area telepathically.

Suddenly Krystal lets out an audible gasp and opens her comlink.

"You guys, it's! StarWolf!" she cries out with a tremor in her throat.

"Awww she gave it away..." says Panther with a disappointed tone in his deep, smooth voice. Suddenly his face appearing on the comlink, as the StarWolf comlink meshed with the others. Fay makes a sudden tilt of her head as she perks her lips.

"Wait, how do you guys do that? _Why_ do you guys do that?" she asks.

"Because it's to strike fear in your little hearts!" Wolf says with a goofy villainous grin.

"Also for...showmanship...I guess.." says Leon. "I was against it personally.." Leon continues.

"I like it.." Algy mutters.

"Well you're new at this.." says Panther.

"No...pretty sure you're the one who's new.." Algy says as he narrows his wide eyes.

"Uhh..." Panther mutters.

"Enough of this! How can you do this, Wolf!" Krystal shouts.

"Mood killer.." Leon utters in the background.

"Hrmm hrfmm not to me.." Panther and Leon audibly banter back and forth in the background. While Wolf took up the comlink screen.

"Not even going to bother arguing against your foolish ethics, but I don't particularly remember denouncing what side we were on in the first place, I only remember common foes, but now and...only now will you fools understand where WE stand.." says Wolf.

"You killed troops in peace time, and then you took Slippy..." says Krystal, she narrows her eyes and began using telepathy to attempt to invade their minds, she began seeing images of the young Venomian emperor they had met earlier.

Suddenly Wolf shook his head.

"Urrggh, crap, I forgot she could...Panther!" Wolf orders. Panther swings in beside him.

"I got it, time to tango, Krystal..Won't it be fun?" He asks.

"Who 'dat?" Miyu asks with sarcastic slang in her voice.

"I don't want to talk about it right now.." Krystal mutters. Suddenly Falco speaks up.

"You scum bags don't know when to call it quits do ya? Guess we gotta let history repeat itself." says Falco with even more slang in his tone.

"Falco please don't do anything stupid, Fox ain't here!" says Katt worriedly.

"Katt!" Falco whines loudly.

"How disappointing that you don't have Fox with you.." Says Wolf.

"Enough chit-chat!" Falco shouts as he flies in with full boost. "Eat this!" he shouts as he fires wildly with his twin laser cannons.

The lasers dart about, Wolf and Panther dive in, and each of them make barrel roll maneuvers deflecting the laser bolts as they flew in, Krystal, Miyu and Falco charged forward as well at full boost; Miyu's craft darting ahead as it was clearly faster and lighter.

The other venomian fighters seemed like gnats as the Wolfens charged in, Wolf, and Panther flew in at Krystal Miyu and Falco, Katt turned and flew back to meet Fay at their ships, she could see Leon and Algy's Wolfen fighters closing in on the ships.

"Falco, we need help defending the ships!" says Katt.

"Krystal and Miyu are fighting StarWolf, Katt!" Falco replies.

"So are we! I think Leon's over here too!" Katt replies.

"Dang..." Falco mutters, and turns off to the side, and darts off toward the ships, trailed by a blue stream that made a visible arch, before dissipating.

Panther turns and begins chasing after Falco, Krystal turns to attack Panther, producing a charge shot and firing. Miyu went straight ahead after Wolf, and the two began firing wildly at each other; Wolf's fighter featuring twin red-phased laser cannons, while Miyu's were merely green-phased.

Wolf and Miyu boost back and forth, up an down, chasing one another, and continuing to unleash a barrage of laser fire, narrowly hitting one another in an intense tango of barrel-rolls and laser fire.

Panther hears a ringing alarm in his cock-pit and looks over as he sees a red bulb homing in on him, he turns and makes a sharp turn, making a full turn before the red charge shot lost him.

He turns and sees Krystal firing on him with single lasers, firing rapid fire as the laser bolts zinged above and blow him, lighting up his dark craft with green glints as the laser bolts missed and passed by.

"Krystal, is that you? Already after my tail I see, I don't blame you." says Panther.

"Urrgghh..." Krystal growls loudly as she continues to fire. Panther closed in quickly, barrel-rolling back and forth, deflecting laser bolts, before Krystal hit dead center, and a few green streaks scraped across the Wolfen's fuselage, and one hitting an engine structure producing a flew sputters and sparks, giving Panther a violent shake.

Panther yanks his controls to the right and veers off away from her as she nearly hit him, she jiggles herself to her right, and then banks left after Panther.

Krystal had laser-like focus as she trailed behind Panther, continuing to fire.

"Not bad, beautiful.." Panther says with a lustful grimace as he makes a U-turn maneuver and aims on her, firing a few times, Krystal makes a barrel roll to deflect some of his fire, slapping a few of the vibrant red laser bolts away from her as she made a hasty boost forward.

"But, I think I'm the one in charge here.." says Panther as he jerks one way, and then back the other, firing a few laser bolts and a charge shot, Krystal spins her craft about a bit more, dodging a few more blasts before being hit in the fuselage right out front, and a charge shot lights up right on top of her, exploding and shaking the Arwing, throwing it off-trajectory for a moment before her forward thrust corrected itself.

"Aughh!" Krystal lets out a shrill scream as she is shaken badly, her Arwing decorated now by a few blast marks, and her wing on one side was cracked.

Fay looks over as Falco and Katt joined her at the ships, but could see Krystal struggling against Panther, and Miyu and Wolf caught in a furious battle.

"Miyu, help her!" Fay complains.

"I'm a little busy!" Miyu panics at her controls, jerking back and forth at the control sticks frantically as Wolf began to trail her; Miyu could see red laser bolts all around her whenever she wasn't spinning like a top during a barrel-roll.

Suddenly, a pair of laser bolts hit Miyu's rear. "Aurgh, dammit!" Miyu curses as her whole craft shuttered.

"You're not so tough!" Wolf taunts. Miyu jerks her controls and makes a sudden narrow U-Turn, producing a full boost, Wolf makes out a distant blue stream that suddenly arched toward him.

"Urgh.." Wolf growls as he jerks his controls to the side to veer out of the way as Miyu sped passed him like a blur of impeccable speed.

Krystal manages to veer around again, as Panther continued to fire on her, Panther began trying to get his path of fire out ahead of her, he suddenly ceases his fire, and began trying to time his attack, Krystal looked about wondering what he was doing.

She clenches her teeth and puts her fingers to her temple, seeing briefly into his mind and seeing what he was doing, suddenly, a barrage of fire opened in front of her, giving a split second to react, she lets out a frightened whimper as she jerks away to dodge it, his fire ceases again, and Krystal synchronizes her movement with his timing as she maintained a telepathic link, suddenly Krystal made a sharp turn, pulling up and lining up her sights with his fire; she opened up a rapid fire barrage, followed by two frantic charge shots.

Suddenly, a few laser bolts nick the bottom of Panther's Wolfen, and a charge shot hits his Wolfen in the shoulder engine structure, producing a large red blast shuddering his craft violently; his lower wing is snapped like a twig and flutters off into space.

"No way..." Panther mutters to himself, growing suddenly angry toward her. He made a somersault movement, and Krystal attempted to follow, turning her craft upward at an angle to meet him, and suddenly he continues in an upward spiral motion, and Krystal loses him, suddenly, she takes another few laser bolts in the side of her fuselage.

Suddenly, there's a spurt of sparks within her fuselage and Krystal throws her hand over her face. "Aeighh!" she cries.

Meanwhile, the two Wolfens close in on the ships fast, and each open fire, one with twin lasers the other with single blasts, as well as charge shots, began pelting the side of the cornerian battle carrier, causing it to shake, and shudder, a few explosions of sparks and bubbling smoke burst from the side of the carrier as the Wolfens pass by, and they fire on the small carrier as well, the turrets helpless against the speed and ferociousness of the Wolfens.

Rob64 stiffly darts his head about, glancing at the control screens as a siren began to whine, the ship making a frightful shudder as he takes fire.

The two Wolfens engines roar as they make a turn toward the ships, preparing another pass.

They could see the interceptor Arwing and Cornerian strike fighter flying toward them, producing incoming laser fire, when suddenly, Falco comes in from an angle and charges straight for Leon. Leon feels his Wolfen shudder and grunts as he jerks his controls to dodge as Falco nearly collided with him at high speed.

"Arrgghh Falco you fool!" he shouts.

"Get back here, lizard, you're gonna pay!" Falco taunts.

Wolf veers back and forth pursued by Miyu.

"Urgh, these damnable interceptor Arwings!.." he growls as he finds it near impossible to outmaneuver Miyu as she clenched her fangs, using intense focus to keep on him; not quite able to land another hit on him, he's seemed to have learned her pilot patterns, but his bulky Wolfen wasn't quite able to escape.

Krystal hits the boost and heads straight for the Sargasso station, followed by Panther, Krystal began drawing nearer and nearer, her trajectory wasn't shifting at all. Panther chased after her.

"Krys...what are you even doing?" he asks in frustration, when suddenly she veers one way, and then the other, headed for a gaping area in the superstructure; where there were bridges and vein-like structures going back and forth, and she narrowly passes in a narrow space. Panther hits a lever, closing his remaining three wings a bit as he chased after her.

All around them, they zoomed through the blurring, dense mechanical structure of the station; narrowly missing protrusions in their path, having little space to maneuver.

Krystal struggles to keep up, but knew she couldn't afford to slow down with Panther chasing her.

"C'mon Fox, you must've taught me something!" she says to herself as she looks down at the status display, one of her wings flashed red as it was damaged, the structure around her and the Arwing itself, all scanned together into a textureless virtual wire frame display as she moved on trough, she payed attention to whatever structures were ahead of her as she maneuvered back and forth.

Krystal suddenly gets a sudden telepathic glimmer and she could feel the presence of Slippy, she looks around herself, the surrounding structure were like city buildings, and she suddenly knew exactly where Slippy was.

She hits her breaks; the shoulders angle outward and produce green glimmers as she makes a turn and dives down.

Panther jolts and hits his comlink.

"Wolf, we've got a problem, she's going after the frog."

"Alright, you take care of things out here then.." Wolf says menacingly.

Panther flies out from the superstructure chase, and flies after Wolf as he was pursued by Miyu, Panther fires on her and forces her to turn away.

Miyu flies off as Panther flies on after her, and Wolf breaks free, he turns toward the station and dives downward.

Krystal looks around, as she hovers downward into the dense structure, when suddenly a pair of red flickering laser bolts came in through a tight space above and struck her in the back, Krystal jumped and jolted at her controls and flew forward, crashing up against a wall; snapping off her damaged wing, causing her Arwing to list the left.

"Uggh!" Krystal grunts as she looks at her flickering nub of a left wing. Wolf flies in through the complex maze of structures after her, Krystal looked forward and could make out a see-through bridge, as a few Ruffian soldiers ran back and forth through it.

Krystal punches the boost button and her Arwing lurches forward violently, Wolf widens his eye and bites his lip in shock as he watches her fly forward; the onlooking ruffian troops look on in shock as they see the Arwing headed straight for them at blurring speeds. The sharp tip of her Arwing fuselage smashes through the transparent hexagon paneled bridge structure, sending fragments and debris raining in and scattering across the floor, ruffian troops run, scurry, and dive for cover as the Arwing came crashing through the ceiling and wall.

In that second, suddenly everything begins to be vacuumed out by explosive decompression, ruffians find themselves pulled in; one crashes against the Arwing fuselage and screams in terror as he is pulled up, sliding against the Arwing structure before being pulled into space where all fell silent and he felt himself encroached, yet seized by the cold, lack of pressure in space.

Krystal sat in her cockpit, unconscious from shock before the sounds of sirens within the Arwing awakened her, her eyes flitted open as a bit of blood trickled down her forehead and she looked forward, suddenly, the hexagonal structure began to glow as a static-energy-shield shut in and encroached around the Arwing and it locked into place, suddenly the violent whisps of air stopped; this corridor was now once again air-tight.

"Slippy.." says Krystal under her breath as she pulls a slot on the side of her controls layout, and hits a button and a box springs out from the bottom of the Arwing and falls to the floor; a small battlefield carrier case. She then hit the unlock button on her cockpit canopy, and it slowly began to whine open with a hiss, Krystal undid her slaps that held her in place as she dangled, now under the artificial gravity of the station.

She dropped down and fell to the metal grated floor with a thud, she winced as she felt a twinge of pain in her shins as she hit the floor at an awkward angle. Suddenly, the sealed door slid back open a ways way, and Krystal stood up in fright.

The ruffian soldiers held their blaster weapons forward and began shouting to her.

"Don't move crayon lady!" one of the two ruffians shouts, as he walks down the corridor, joined by another with a plasma machine gun. Krystal eyed the weapon with intense interest before training back to the first, she raised her hands with fear as they approached.

"Easy now.." he mutters as her reaches for her hand, Krystal clenches her eyes shut for a moment, and then opened them; now her eyes glow with blue fury. Suddenly, Krystal's hand lit up in blue flame, the two ruffians tilted their hands in startled surprise, and Krystal threw her hand toward the first one, and cast a blue oscillating fire ball, blasting him in the face, and sending him flopping to the ground with little but a cut-off cry of singed fright.

"Hey, what are you doing!" the other raises his machine blaster, and Krystal lets out a shout of adrenaline and charge forward, grabbing his blaster as he began to fire, the yellow-green rapid fire laser bolts began to spurt out, the path of fire jerks toward a wall and skitters across the ceiling as Krystal held the weapon and shoved the ruffian to the floor, Krystal raises her leg and slams her foot down onto his chest, his whole body violently shook from the impact and he lets out a cough, Krystal then swung the arm-rest of the gun across his head, and he lay still.

Krystal places the weapon firmly in her arms in combat firing stance before she began to charge forward.

Suddenly more came, and laser fire began to zing out from a cloud of steam looming in the corridor ahead of her, lit up red and orange by flashing alarm lights, and blaring alarms.

"Close the blast door, now!" she hears a frantic voice, Krystal stops and skids on her feet, spins around, trailed by her tail and her flowing cape as she ran back to the carrier-case, picks it up by the handle and turns around, she hit a lock button at the top and it flipped open, revealing a booster jet pack, featuring the jets placed under blue shoulder structures, similar to everything used or customized by the StarFox team.

She through it onto her back and ran forward as fast as she could, seeing the large metal door beginning to close, forced to weave and strafe this way and that as small yellow laser bolts zipped through the steam, just as the door was about to close in front of her, she drew her staff.

She held it forward and armed it; causing it to slide out and extend telescopically; the rod of gold and blue styling caught the door and caused it to shudder, as did three or four ruffians at the other end, they all stood back and began firing wildly.

Krystal commanded her staff to produce a shimmering blue dome of mystical energy; the shield deflected the laser bolts sending them scattering about, Krystal swung around with the machine gun and fired wildly about, hitting a few control panels, causing the door's rail system to go down, and she was able to shove the doors open as she walked through.

Her machine gun fire knocked down two of the ruffians while the other two began running down another corridor dense with wiring, circuit boxes, maintenance panels, pipework, mesh panels on the floors, walls and ceiling, and ribbed beams in the crude infrastructure of the station, up ahead there were a number of branching corridors.

Krystal ran forward and fires wildly, her staff in one hand and the machine gun in the other, blasting down, she strafes away from a corner as she could immediately detect him telepathically, she fires just before she comes into eye-to-eye view of him, two or three laser bolts burned into him, leaving glowing reddish welts on his body as he lurched backward and flopped to the floor.

The other lunges out at her and fires a few times with a blaster, Krystal makes a graceful side-flip to the left, then dives forward, flailing her staff in an upward diagonal sweep, hitting him in the head with a polearm, producing an audible clunk noise at it slammed into his head, he made a wince that same moment before staggering. Krystal spun around again and slashed the spade tip across his chest, then swung the whole polearm into him, plowing him over with the weapon as he fell to the floor like a discarded rag doll, she then ran forward again, and instinctively down one specific corridor, as she used her extrasensory perception to guide herself toward Slippy.

Meanwhile outside the station, three Wolfen fighters, and a few more ruffian fighters approached the two ships, firing a barrage of charge shots, laser fire, and missiles, pelting the shield of the two ships, some breaking through and inflicting damage on their ships, leaving burnt pucks and craters against the armor of the two ships.

Miyu and Fay in the interceptor Arwings, Falco in the standard Arwing, and Katt in the strike fighter sputtered about the ships, blasting desperately at the StarWolf fighters and their backup to defend the two ships.

"Krystal has boarded the station to get Slippy!" Says Miyu. "Not exactly the plan I had in mind." she complains.

"Wolf went after her." says Falco "We gotta do somethin'!" he says.

"Well we'll just have to wait, hopefully she hurries, we can't keep this up forever!" says Miyu.

Katt makes a whorled maneuver, her laser cannons blazing as she managed to gun down a few more enemy fighters, but suddenly took a shot from behind, as Panther in his Wolfen began trailing her.

"Guys, this ship can't exactly take on a Wolfen!" She complains.

"Urggh!" Falco groans as he steers himself around in an angled U-turn maneuver, and opened up a barrage of twin-laser fire on Panther, who merely made a barrel-roll motion and deflected a few laser bolts, but he was forced to turn the other way, letting Katt escape, the other two interceptor Arwings flew beside Falco and opened fire as well as the Wolfen fighters began trying to group up.

Falco took a few more laser bolts to the side of his fuselage; his shield growing more and more faint as blast marks began to decorate his fuselage.

"That Arwing not looking so pretty now is it Falco?" Leon taunts as he turned to chase Falco as he passed by, trying to land more laser fire on him. Falco barrel-rolls desperately, and swerves back and forth, boosting short bursts doing all he could to defend against Leon.

Falco yanks up on his controls and attempts a somersault, and in that moment, Leon does the same, chasing Falco in his Wolfen, Falco jerks to the left and manages to lose Leon. Algy and Panther dove in and opened fire, firing charge shots toward the bridge of the carrier.

Fay swerved the other way and growls to herself.

"Not my ship!" she says she charges up another scatter charge shot, firing, unleashing streaks of green light, and charges another, firing repeatedly. The Wolfens take a few of the thin scattering green beams and shudder from the damage; left scathed with burnt blast marks, leaking sparks.

Algy and Panther roll and angle their craft and veer away as Fay fired a few more times after them before tapping her breaks, and veering back to her ship.

Back on the station, a crowd of ruffian soldiers ran to the prison area, where Slippy was held, and lined the corridor, standing behind boxes or on top of them, their weapons trained to the door as it slid shut, before Krystal could approach it, they hid in rivets of the walls as well, ready to fire.

Krystal ran down the corridor; the machine gun in her hand came to a click as she finds it out of ammunition, and she lets it drop to the floor, she stops for a moment, quickly folding her cape up like a blanket to stuff it into her silver plated backpack, and throwing the jetpack back on, she engaged its back thrusters and she began hovering, she lurches her body forward and charges, hovering down the corridor at high speed.

Suddenly, a ruffian in a small gorilla-like mech-suit began turning to face her; she draws and extends her staff; and quickly charges a greater ground quake, as red flickers of energy charge toward the tip of her staff, and she swings it into the battlemech; suddenly as though like a seismic boom, a force travels through the suit, and tears it apart in a blast of red fire, blowing it to pieces as Krystal flew on by. The tattered, emaciated mech suit flew back and slammed against the wall, producing a blast of smoke and fire as it collapsed to the floor and against the wall.

Krystal skids on her feet as she sees its arm mounted gatling gun hit the floor beside the blazing wreckage behind her. She sheathes her staff, and drew up the gatling gun before she began again hovering and flew off down the corridor.

Krystal came to the closed blast door, and thought back to her staff again, drawing it again.

She approached the door, and the ruffians on the other side could hear clanking on the other end, before suddenly the door exploded inward; denting inward, bent out of shape by a powerful impact force, suddenly, they hear Krystal shout, and the doors blew inward all the way, falling to the floor with a loud crash as they could see her silhouette; with blazing blue eyes piercing through the steam and smoke fumes.

In a panic, they opened fire, and Krystal held her staff forward; casting a dome shield over herself as she slowly, cautiously walks forward, holding the gatling gun downward before lifting it, and opening fire; the gatling gun produces a flower of shimmering blue flames as its tiny blue laser trail spurts and carries across the room; the soldiers scattered as one by one gunned down, consumed in sparks and burn marks from the gatling gun before flopping to the floor like ragdolls.

The laser bolts filled the smokey room with a flickering light show; lighting up green, red and blue as bolts of light darted back and forth, producing bursting sparks and blasts whenever they hit something; Krystal ceases her fire; the spinning barrel portion of her weapon glowing blue as she set it to her back-holster. She then twirled her staff in her fingers as a few distraught ruffian troops remained before her.

She flailed her staff in her hands, twirling about as she swung on the first; he attempts to run up and swing on her with his weapon, but she bashed it aside with the shaft of her polearm before twirling again, smacking him with the staff one way, than slashing him with the spade before he was thrown back from it.

The staff lit up with power as she made a graceful side flip; landing her feet against the wall.

"Raggh!" she cries out as she swung downward, slashing another down across his torso and he fell to the floor from the blow, she twirls on her feet again, flailing the staff over her head as she spun on her heel. She bashes the soldier across the chest with the shaft, then swings him up against the wall, pounding him against it as he staggers from the blow. She swung the staff to the side and struck him upside the head, letting him slide to the floor, pinned against the wall, the last raises a rifle and attempts to fire.

Krystal widens her eyes in surprise, and strafed to the side with a wince just as he fires, the laser bolt grazes her hip, burning her as she swung forward with her staff; setting the top of it along the top of the rifle; then forces it to the floor with a jerk, and stomps on the shaft with her foot; leaving the weapon bent at the end; worthless.

She twirled the staff in her hand before the ruffian could take a step back, and swung horizontally; slashing him across the face with the spade end of her staff, causing him to lurch back level in the air, before hitting the grated floor.

Krystal stood there for a moment in the messy smoking corridor, surrounded by fallen ruffians, debris and shrapnel scattered across the floor, she was panting; her shoulders rising and falling with each breath. A burned graze across her hip, she attempted to touch it with her hand, but it blossomed with stinging pain by a single touch.

"Unnghh.." Krystal grunts, pulling her hand away. She began walking forward until she went through another set of sliding doors to find Slippy locked in a cell.

"Krystal!?" Slippy cried out in confusion.

"Slippy!" Says Krystal as she raises her eyebrows, running down the corridor and standing across from him as the shield flickered. She hit a button on the side of the cell, and the laser bars released, allowing Slippy to step out.

"What did they do to you?" Krystal asks worriedly. Slippy's goofy eyes darted to her.

"Oh, they didn't do anything yet, I just got here like a short while ago, than apparently...you guys shown up.." says Slippy.

"That was lucky." says Krystal. "We need to go, Slippy, follow me!" Krystal says as she makes a turn, grabbing Slippy's arm to try and tug him along but he was sturdy and heavy compared to her, but he began to run after her. Slippy begins to follow, struggling to keep up.

"Krystal wait!" he calls out struggling to keep up.

"Sorry.." says Krystal.

"So how did you get in here anyway?" Slippy asks as the two jogged along.

"Uhh...Your Arwing.." says Krystal.

"I don't like the sound of that..." Slippy says with fearful sarcasm, dreading what he would soon see.

They came around a corner, and suddenly the door slip open, and Wolf O'Donnell stood there, waiting for them.

"It's rude for guests to run about in their host's place of living without their guidance, or permission." says Wolf as he drew his heavy plasma-bolt pistol; featuring a razor sharp bayonet jutting out at its front.

Krystal and Slippy staggered in fright. Wolf grimaced at them with a fanged look on his gruff, beaten face. His glowing eye glowing through the steam and smoke as it fluttered about. Krystal resorted to her telepathy, connecting instantly to Slippy's mind.

"Slippy, I'm going to go right at him, and I want you to run passed me, I'll think of a way to escape." says Krystal's voice within Slippy's mind.

"Uhh...Krys, not even Fox can take him hand-to-hand.." says Slippy in reply in the recesses of their linked minds.

"Just go!" Krystal says sternly.

"Okay!" Slippy says aloud.

"Huh?" Wolf asks with a raise of his intact eyebrow.

"Raggh!" Krystal shouts as she ignites her backpack and flies forward with great speed, drawing her staff, and preparing a swing as she closed in on Wolf.

Wolf lunges forward with a girdling roar and holds his hands out, catching Krystal's staff by the shaft, and she uses the force of her jetpack to help her jerk and crash him up against the wall; causing the metal plating to smash and dent, Wolf and Krystal wrestled around for a moment while Slippy ran passed them, Wolf grew ever more frustrated and growls loudly as he shoves Krystal back, sending her staggering on her feet and stumbling back.

He rushes forward and flails his hand, letting his claws lash around, Krystal winces as she ducks and rushes forward; his claws slash against he metal wall, leaving deep scratch marks, rather frightful to Krystal.

Krystal swung her staff, twirling it and rolling it in her hands, and swung again at Wolf; he blocks blow after blow with an angling of his forearm; swatting it aside before suddenly Krystal swung and struck him in the side with a thrust of the spade; cutting his side.

"Urggh! Guess you aren't playing around!.." Wolf says with a groan, before abruptly lunging at Krystal again, flailing his claws around; clashing with Krystal's staff as she holds it out to defend herself, while she backs away from him.

Wolf dashes at her and throws his elbow forward, Krystal strafes to the side, and Wolf lifts his leg and swings it around, she ducks and lets his kick sweep over her head, he plants his foot down and draws his bayonet blaster and swings, letting the bayonet make a chopping motion as Krystal raises her staff over her head; clashing loudly as Wolf fires, and a large green blast shot erupts from the pistol and explodes into the wall behind them leaving a rather large crater for a small blaster; Krystal feels the power of the weapon vibrate through her staff and her arms, numbing her muscles momentarily.

Wolf swings again and fires as Krystal weaves about, he sweeps his arm and his claws slash across Krystal's abdomen, leaving three red scars as she stumbles back with a pained wince. Wolf wraps his massive hand around her frail neck and throws her into the wall.

Krystal clenches her eyes shut in terror as Wolf holds her up off her feet.

"You've definitely got more skill than anyone would think...but no one is better than me." he says plainly, with a vicious toothy grin on his face.

Krystal moves her hand down to her belt and finds one of the two barrier shield generators she always kept. She clicks the button and a dome of protective energy forms up around her, throwing Wolf back with a blast of sparks, sending him crashing into a wall.

"Urgh!" He groans as he crashes up against the wall; he raises his weapon and fires, the blast being absorbed by the barrier as Krystal stood there; she raised her staff and began firing on him with fire bolts.

Wolf darts down the corridor, frustrated, humiliated even. Krystal ignited her jet-pack and flew off the other way, Wolf turned and followed her; knowing her shield wouldn't last long.

Krystal found Slippy just as her shield faded away, and grabbed Slippy by his shoulder belt, the two barely fluttered along due to Slippy's weight. But soon they could hear Wolf catching up to them, before long they found the Arwing lodged into the space bridge.

"Ahh!" Slippy let out a cry of dissent as he looked up at the Arwing.

"...I guess it could be worse, it'll definitely need maintenance..." Krystal hefted Slippy as he grabbed hold of her shoulders as they hovered up to the Arwing cockpit. Slippy and Krystal each grab hold of whatever they could from the dangling cockpit.

"Well Slippy, we'll be awful close so- Slippy cuts her short with a raise of his hand.

"Oh actually Krys, that won't be necessary, there's another new feature I'd like to show you." he says. He hits a switch up near the head-rest of the cockpit seat, and suddenly it slides forward a bit, revealing a back seat just behind it.

"O-ohh.." Krystal says, dumbfounded by it. "That's nice." she says half smiling. "I still have dibs on driving though!" Krystal says abruptly before Slippy could say anything else.

"Ahh, whatever let's just get outta here!" Slippy says with a slightly fearful tone in his voice.

Slippy climbs through to the back and into the seat. While Krystal sits down in the front, and closes the cockpit canopy hatch.

Suddenly they see Wolf run into the hall way and begin firing wildly.

"Let's go let's go LET'S GO!" Slippy screams in a panic.

"I'm trying!" Krystal cries back as she jerks around at the controls frantically as the Arwing barely managed to reverse and pull from the hole it created in the wall and ceiling, suddenly decompression occurs again, and Wolf grabs hold of a structure beam beside him, and hits an emergency button, as the emergency air lock doors began to slide shut, he had a frightful glare straight at Krystal and Slippy, as they stared back, dreading that they'd ever meet him again.

The battered one-winged Arwing flies up and out from the Sargasso space station, its afterburner thrusters beginning to flicker and leak bluish smoke as well. They rocketed on toward the fleet still under attack by the the Wolfens; none of the regular fighters remained, but a few began chasing Krystal and Slippy in their barely-operable Arwing. As well as two Venomian frigates, firing on them as they puttered along slowly.

"I have Slippy, let's just get out of here!" Krystal says shrilly into the comlink.

"Just get close to the carrier, Krystal, I'll warp us all out of here!" says Fay through their comlink.

Laser fire harasses them as Krystal draws near to the fleet, the three Wolfens are narrowly pushed back by the defensive fire of the carrier, as it and the small Cornerian lander piloted by Rob64 make a turn away from the station toward the dark blanket of space speckled by distant colorful celestial gas clouds, and a sea of shimmering stars.

The Wolfens arch around as they begin preparing another volley as Krystal drew near to their small fleet, oddly, the two interceptor Arwings, the strike fighter, and the other standard Arwing.

Krystal and Slippy turn to look back through the canopy as they see something suddenly come out of warp.

Suddenly, a massive, arrow-head like warship, a Venomian Betrayer class warship came out of a jump; suddenly, it began firing broad beams of red light, blasting away whole asteroids that came into its path.

"Okay, that thing is definitely mean looking." says Miyu over their comlink.

"We haven't seen anything like that since Andross was around, and even then I think there was only like three." she says.

The ship was almost as large as Sargasso itself.

"If they're able to build those things, this can't be good.." Fay says fearfully with a puppy whimper in her tone.

"C'mon Fay, the bigger they are the harder they fall." Miyu says with a gruff, confident whimsy in her tone.

The fleet lines up and a tunnel in space appears in front of them, the whole fleet disappears into the distance of space, trailed by blue streams of light behind their thruster engines, and lastly a distant twinkle where they vanished, twinkling against the vast array of stars in space.


	4. Chapter 4: Rally of Wings

**Chapter 4: Rally of Wings. A Generation Ago.**

The Cornerian battle carrier, and its small freighter companion sped through space, along with a cluster of fighters buzzing about. They soon come to a stop, floating along in a dark area of space in-between-orbits of the middle Lylat System. Eladard a distant glint distinct against all the other stars.

The front hatches of the Cornerian carrier open up, inviting in the two standard Arwings, the two interceptor variants, and the strike fighter. Two by two, they entered and landed within the two hangar bays. Each box structure had enough room for two aircraft to land beside each other, but only one canal for launching fighters. In the metal floor was a squared rut, and street lining lights leading to the doorway as it slowly shut. Pressure and oxygen returned.

The battle-ravaged standard Arwing hisses as its canopy hatch screeches open, while Fay Spaniel stood outside, along with Falco. Krystal and Slippy step out of the Arwing, and drop down to the metal floor below. While on the other side Fay and Katt came running through a corridor to their left, that which lead to the next docking bay.

Krystal's Arwing had bent, battered wings, and a fuselage decorated with craters and blast marks. Falco's Arwing was too, blackened here and there by laser blasts and explosions, the fuselage cracked. The two interceptors, Miyu's in particular, though escaped any serious damage, was still left uneven with scuffs in its armored fuselage and wings.

"We barely got out of that." says Fay as she walks up and down with a computer pad cradled in her arms, tapping away at its touch screen.

"Those are variants of the Arwings." says Krystal.

"Really professor? Could you tell us more?" Says Miyu sarcastically. As she pats her hard on the shoulder.

"You guys still use these things?" Falco asks with a flick of his head. Miyu raises her eyebrows at Falco.

"Yeah, and your fancy new Arwings took more damage than ours did, Falco." Says Miyu.

"Guys, we have other things going on, we need to tell the General." Says Fay as she waves her hands up in down in frustration. She motions the others to follow her into the bridge.

Falco, Slippy, Krystal, Katt, Miyu and Fay walked into the bridge of the carrier, despite the odd-design of the ship, its bridge was very similar to the older Great Fox bridge, dimly lit, and lit colorfully by a collective of computer screens and control panels. It reminded Falco and Slippy of their first missions with Fox, and Krystal of when she first met the team.

"I guess Krystal never really met us yet." says the tan furred Lynx in a green spacehand uniform, quite similar to Krystal's blue jumpsuit, but green. Falco crosses his arm and straightens himself to enhance his height while he towers over everyone else. Slippy taps the toe of his boot against the floor and rubs the side of his head.

"Yeah, these two were on our team back around the time we started the new StarFox team." Says Slippy. "The StarFox team got its start with mercenary counter attacks against Venomian strike squadrons. Peppy, Falco and I. Than later Miyu and Fay linked up with us to defend against attacks directed at Corneria itself, but then we got word that James Mccloud's commission for the construction of the Great Fox was complete." Says Slippy.

"And then we went our separate ways..." Says Miyu, with a glaring, growling tone to her voice. "Fay and I were ex-military, but Fox still didn't like us wanting to have connections with the Cornerian military, this ship is owned by the fleet, but technically the Great Fox wasn't. Fox preferred to do things his own way...as he says... and then, you guys took all the credit when Fox took down Andross." Says Miyu. Fay had a sad look on her puppy-dog face.

"Miyu, it wasn't quite like that.." says Fay. "We left on our own terms." she says.

"So I heard." Says Miyu. "You guys broke up the team?" Miyu asks.

"It's not like that.." says Falco. "We're... just on hiatus since not much has been happening until now." says Falco.

"Where've you been Falco? You just took off." says Slippy.

"Hey, Slip. Ease off me a little, I was just taking a little vacation, I wanted to spend time with Katt and the others." says Falco. Katt's white eyeliner shone brightly as she slants her eyes at Falco.

"Well, I wanted to spend time with the StarFox team." says Katt.

"Hrmm.." Falco groans.

"So you have experience in an Arwing too I see? I remember hearing about it when you joined the team several years back." says Fay toward Krystal.

"I was on the team for a bit, was trained on the mark 1 Arwing, and then the mark 2's when we fought against Oikonny's rebels, and then the Aparoids." says Krystal. "When I was off the team, I used a Bulldog commander type, and then a CloudRunner Arwing." she explains. "Now, Peppy just sends me around in the Mark 4 on survey missions."

Suddenly, they all hear a blaring repetitive beeping noise, Miyu walks over and taps an arrow-marked yellow button on the console, and a small screen flares up, displaying Rob64's face.

" **Allied ship on approach, boarding request has been received!** " says his flat robotic voice through the compressed audio speaker.

"To board us?" Fay asks.

" **Negative, request for us to board them** **.** " says Rob64.

The five approach the bridge window to look on into space, a distant shining silvery white object closes in quickly from space, growing in their view. Miyu opens up an observation telescopic view, and puts it up on a view-screen, zooming in on the object, blurry at first before coming into focus, was a large silver-white ship, with four massive wings, an enormous dorsal fin, and an elongated front positioned bridge with an eye-visor like window that glows bright.

"It's another... Great Fox?" Falco gasps. Slippy's round face grows with a bright smile.

"Ha, didn't you hear? Peppy commissioned a new Great Fox, and I managed to find the old plan data for the first Great Fox, and we got to assemble a new one, this time with some modifications of my own. This time it is equipped with turrets on each side built similarly to the main guns. Full power turbo-batteries!" says Slippy with a cheerful tone. "I've even outfitted it with the prototype of a new shield system my Dad and I have been working on." says Slippy.

"and it couldn't be ready soon enough!" says a familiar voice on the other end, Beltino's face came on the screen, along with Peppy.

"Slippy just had to hit me with some cruel irony.." Says Peppy. "The very same shield system I crashed through with the old ship... Slippy reverse engineered the Aparoid technology, and also took some hints from Krystal's Cerenian staff, managing to find a way for the Great Fox Three to project this advanced shielding through the Cerenian's magical technology.. The armored hull is laced with a crystalline fiber Slippy created with crystal-dust Krystal managed to gather from those plants on Sauria." Peppy explains. Slippy smiles proudly.

"Let's see Peppy crash _THIS_ baby!" he says. Falco scoffs, and gives Slippy a hefty pat on the shoulder.

"And they say seniors shouldn't drive.." Falco adds.

"Hey guys, the General is requesting that we return to Corneria, we better get going." says Fox, as his fierce, fox face appears on the screen as well. Krystal stammers at his face, her eyes grow wide as she feels herself burn up. Miyu glances on Krystal as she stood static like a statue.

The _Great Fox III_ , and the Cornerian battle carrier fly side by side through space; their yellow and blue after-burners produce a trail as they sped toward Corneria, as Arwings flicked back and forth between them, a few Arwings flew into the rear entrance of the _Great Fox III._ The rear door flicks open with a faint, white glow of an airlock shield, one by one the Arwings slow their advance, following guide-lights that gleam out into the darkness of space, one by one passing through the airlock shield, and flying through a short downward tunnel that lead them to the vast, holding bay; filled with several spare Arwings held in holding cradles beside cat-walk bridges for the pilots to board their machines. The huge rectangular room angles to a large square doorway where the Arwings would launch from the hangar. Just wide enough for two or so Arwings to go through at once, through an Airlock shield.

About the hangar, were wheeled scaffolding structures for maintenance, loading carts with ammunition and spare parts, replacement wings ready to be clamped onto battle damaged aircraft, A row of five or six LandMasters tucked under small garage-like structures on one side, and the old Blue Marine held up by metal girder cradles. Up above were various lifter arms along a series of rails that webbed the ceiling, as well as a few Arwing variants. There were five standard Arwing Mark 4's. Two bomber variant Arwings; one equipped with a few grabber arms, and box-like structures mounted on the bottom of the fuselage. There was also a somewhat larger Arwing variant with eight blue shoulder structures instead of four, the outer ones being much larger than the first row. It also had a long cannon similar to that the LandMaster had. There was lastly a fairly large odd looking vehicle, a craft with two

round structures on each side, a carrier or lander type of machine with a reel-able crane structure.

Suddenly, they see the small freight ship fly in as well through the large vehicle corridor, piloted by Rob64, landing beside the spare Arwings in a large rectangular patch with a large-ship logo at its center; the side sprang open like an animal's ear, and Rob64 hobbled out down a flight of steps.

Three Arwings lined up in the holding arms, and their hatches sprang open, out came Falco, Krystal, and Slippy. Katt remained on the battle carrier with Miyu and Fay as the two ships flew along.

Rob64 walked up a winding stairway to meet Falco, Krystal and Slippy before they began their way for the exit.

Falco, Krystal, and Slippy walk through the exit doors of the launch bay, and down a long highway-like corridor, making a few turns until they reached the large sliding doors that lead to the Great Fox bridge; they found it very similar to the original Great Fox after it was renovated, with silvery white metal wall paneling, and a terraced central platform with two rows of the various bridge control consoles, and a swiveling chair at each. Fox Mccloud sat at the center, Peppy to his right, at some controls as well, and Beltino Toad stood beside Fox.

Fox turned at the chair to see Slippy, and stood up in surprise, his confident face and eyebrows crinkled back as he took a step forward and rolled his hands forward.

"Slippy, is everything okay? What happened?" He asks. Slippy flipped his hands up.

"Hey Fox, I'm fine, Krystal, Falco, Miyu, Fay and Katt came to help." Slippy squeaks, Slippy's voice had a high-pitched croakiness to it, but he had a calm tone in his voice that was recognizeable to his good friends. "StarWolf attacked our base, and they kidnapped me." says Slippy.

"I know that part, Peppy told me, he was hurt too." says Fox with an already-intense tone in his snide, but gruff voice.

"Easy, Fox, let's just take it easy." says Peppy as he grasps Fox's shoulder. Fox glances to Peppy.

"You guys, I think it's pretty serious if StarWolf is out there again, I thought we had a deal with them, we need to confront them!" Says Fox. Falco's beak face smiles as he pounds his fist in his feathery palm.

"Alright I'm in." Falco blasts. Peppy and Krystal stagger.

"Hold on a minute now, you two!" says Peppy. "We need to see what General Pepper thinks we should do, there's more to this situation that we don't know."

"StarWolf is working for someone, I could sense it, don't you remember when we left Sargasso? We saw another ship, a large arrow-head shaped ship fly in just as we were leaving.." says Krystal.

Just then, an arrow-marked yellow icon flashes on a console screen, accompanied by a repetitive beeping, and Peppy turns and taps it like a button. A transmission screen shoots up, Miyu and Fay are pictured seated at the consoles of their own ship, Katt stood beside them as well.

"I didn't think StarWolf's Ruffian gang would be this well armed, I thought the roaches were scattered." says Miyu. "By the looks of it, they have at least one Betrayer ship. This could mean trouble." Miyu adds. Fox nods.

"Peppy wants us to report to General Pepper." says Fox, glancing to Peppy.

"I think they are being armed, and supplied.." Says Peppy. "They were after Slippy's shielding system, I don't think Ruffians have the resources to build something like that, I would think Wolf would realize that on his own, they can't possibly expect to get it to work by themselves." says Peppy.

Katt walks in, stepping in and opening up an icon screen for herself.

"Almost forgot but earlier we mentioned that, Falco and I bumped into StarWolf in New Venom City. Before Peppy interrupted us.." She says, making a long lipped face. "StarWolf were at a bar, and they mentioned something about Dash, they were up to something, apparently under the table." Says Katt.

"I thought we could trust Dash.." says Falco. Fox grits his teeth, rather nervous all of the sudden. He remembers talking to Dash, it doesn't seem like anything he'd do.

"Maybe... maybe we could just see what the General has to say.." Fox says with a stutter.

"I don't know if I'd want to risk ruining our relations with Venom if this turns out to be the case, maybe we are thinking of this out of context... And if not, maybe we can talk to Dash, maybe he's being manipulated by Wolf...Dash is just a kid... Maybe he doesn't know how to stand up to criminals.." says Fox. Peppy raises his eyebrows with glee and nods.

"Oh right Fox, ya really are clever, just like your Father!" says Peppy with joy.

"...Yeah..." Fox says quietly, with a soft sigh. "Just like Dad.." he mumbles. Krystal glances to Fox as she can sense a lot of anxiety spurring about in his mind.

"It is settled then." She says, breaking the two-second silence with closure. "We can return to Corneria and talk to the general. StarWolf is manipulating Dash through intimidation to get resources from him..."

"I guess that makes sense!" says Falco. "The way they talked about the guy, Wolf didn't seem to have any faith in the poor little guy. Figure, those guys goin' to push him around to get what they want, never thought we'd get into politics, aye Fox?"

"Yeah, I guess so." says Fox with a clearly fake chuckle, Falco gave Fox a slight raise in his eyebrows, but turned away with a cross of his arms.

"Understood." says Miyu through the comlink after a short silence, broken only by the humming of a ship's engine, and the puttering beeps of computer consoles. Her gruff voice patching through before being followed by Fay's squeaky, yipping voice.

"I have sent General Pepper a transmission and just got one back. He wants us to proceed straight to Corneria Base, both ships are clear for landing." says Fay. Miyu and Fay's icon screens vanish into static.

The ships sped on passed Eladard; a planet with a violet sky, and a broad set of rings. Then, passed Fortuna; a heavily forested tropical vineworld planet. Then Fichina, the small ice world, finally passing a few more space colony structures they drew in closer to Corneria just beyond the Lylat System's asteroid belt.

Rob64, Peppy, Slippy, Beltino, and Falco remained at the Great Fox helm on the bridge, exchanging occasional conversation with Miyu, Fay and Katt on the other side. Fox walked down the bridge corridor. The metal hallway lined with metallic paneling and arched floor-to-ceiling support beams, maintenance door-panels, pipes, wires, and flickering trails of light within circuit lines, lit by light panels in the ceiling and along where the floor meets the angular paneled walls.

Fox made a turn down a fork in the corridors, and passed through a sliding door into the team's rec room; made up of a polygon oval room with a television projector in a round corner, with some old video game console hooked up to it, a couple of couches facing each other with a coffee table in the middle. Slippy was obsessed with making it identical to the Great Fox they had before, Slippy even found old photographs of the team members and friends, printed them out and framed them here and there on the metal walls, using a near-indestructible adhesive. Fox glances at a picture, displaying a younger picture of himself in a cadet uniform being tussled playfully by Bill Gray.

Beside it, was a somewhat faded image; a slightly lower resolution digital image of James Mccloud; sunglasses over his face, with a smirk, beside a younger, slimmer, smoother Peppy, and Pigma; looking significantly less disgusting than he did last time Fox saw him, even how he looked before becoming a behemoth Aparoid monster.

Fox slouched down on the couch and curled his tail, grasping his hands together, just then, Slippy and Krystal walk on through, a word or two of their conversation slipped in just as the door flung open, Slippy's squeaky voice, and Krystal being rather quiet with low, soft words.

"Oh, hey Fox." Slippy says.

"Slippy!" says Fox as he perks his shoulders up, sitting up, his back against the couch's. Slippy sat beside Fox on the couch, and Krystal walked around, her blackish blue cape whirling just over her gently rolling tail before she sat down on the other couch across from Fox and Slippy.

"Fox...you okay?" Slippy asks.

"What do you mean?" Fox asks. "I'm fine, just a little tense I guess, with this whole thing going on.." says Fox.

"Krystal says its something else, and her sixth sense doesn't lie.." says Slippy.

"Krystal.." Fox grunts, looking up at her, to see her pretty face staring back at him, still and focused. Even now she peered into his mind, he was helpless to shield against it.

"Okay... it just bothers me, whenever Peppy mentions Dad.." Says Fox. Slippy's smile vanishes as he looks up at Fox.

"Fox.." he says softly.

"It's no big deal you guys, Peppy's been doing this forever, it hasn't stopped me before." says Fox, with an upward tone, believing that his confidence would put the team at ease, just like usual.

"It is a big deal, Fox.. it hurts you." says Krystal. "Fox, I noticed this numerous times, every mention of your father does something to you, you don't have to let it. Talk to Peppy, Fox, he will understand. I know he will." says Krystal. "I have.." she adds. Fox grits his fist.

"It's different with you, Krystal." says Fox. "He.. _expects_ me to be just like his battle-buddy. Everybody does..." Fox's voice begins to crack, and croak. Krystal and Slippy look on him with trembling eyes.

"Fox... I have never seen you as the Son of James Mccloud...I've only seen you as Fox Mccloud.." says Krystal.

"Fox... I've known you since your Dad was around.." Says Slippy. "You'll always be my study-buddy., even if I went into Advanced Mechanical Engineering and you went into blast gunnery and aircraft tactics back in the Academy... Heh heh.." says Slippy. Fox sulks for a moment.

Suddenly, there was another bleep at Slippy's hip, and they heard Peppy's voice.

"Hey Slippy I could use your help over here, I can't for the life of me understand this thing-!" Peppy's old pitch voice comes in through his comlink. "Falco done something and I'm not sure how to set it back." he complains through a scratchy speaker.

"I didn't do nothin'!" They faintly, but clearly hear Falco complaining as well. Slippy arched his head back and groaned.

"Aughh... Gotta go, I'll be back." Slippy grunts as he stood up and walked through the sliding door into the hallway. They could hear Slippy complaining to himself just before the door slid shut with a hiss and a metallic clank.

"Poor Slippy.." Says Krystal. Fox chuckles a bit before the room fell silent, and awkward.

"Don't get me wrong... Peppy has been there for me for a long time, he looked out for me ever since Dad died." says Fox. Krystal stares on at Fox, almost as though she was staring through him like he were a window.

"Than he will understand...let him know that he needs to see you as Fox, not just the son of James Mccloud, but Fox.." says Krystal.

"I know what you're trying to do, Krystal." says Fox as he rubs the bridge of his snout with his fingers. "Trust me, Fox... I ..." Krystal trails off.

"Fox, I hurt you. I ran off to StarWolf, and it hurt you. Peppy knows it, and still he has been soft on me when we've been investing my homeworld of Cerenia. Fox, I am sorry, I am so Sorry!.." Krystal raises her voice, her shrill crying voice bouncing off the walls as Fox's green eyes held open wide.

"Krystal... I was never mad at you... I could never be." says Fox.

"Fox, when I met you and the others. I had no one and nothing, the man who raised me on Sauria had been dead for a while by that point, I just wanted to find out what happened to our culture, he never told me until the last conversation I had before he was killed by Scales' men." says Krystal.

Fox stood up, and walked over, while Krystal looked up at him trembling. Fox sat down beside her and took her hand in his; a drape on the back of her hand and palm was held in place by a ring on her middle finger, a small gemstone lay in the middle of it. Fox touched Krystal's tiny feminine fingers and Krystal sat there and shook.

Krystal, I'm sorry too.. I kicked you off the team for a stupid reason, and that hurt you too." says Fox. Krystal places her hand over her mouth to hide her gasping. "I need to tell you something... Krystal, I was worried something would happen to you, I was afraid I could lose you. There's no one else in the Lylat System who was anything like you. The endless battles were turning you into something though... that innocent, gentle person I met on Sauria... she was disappearing." says Fox. "I guess it was selfish of me to think I needed to protect you from that.." says Fox.

Suddenly, Rob64's voice comes through both their comlinks with some slight static.

 **"All hands to Great Fox bridge, all hands, to Great Fox bridge. Beginning Approach to Corneria."**

Krystal and Fox stood up in a hurry and ran for the door. Both caught in a whirl of anxiety of what had happened, but they were like drones, instinctive in response to their military calls.

Meanwhile, at the bridge, Falco sat at the communications seat, a desk of controls, buttons, switches, levers, and dials surrounded him, while to his left on the slightly higher platform, Slippy and Rob64 tapped away at the controls, Peppy sat at the captain's chair at the center.

Falco maintained a conversation on the main screen, where Miyu, Fay, and Katt icons remained in a live video feed.

"So, I thought Peppy retired." Says Miyu.

"No, I'm too old to retire." Says Peppy.

"Well...okay then." Miyu replies with a confused giggle.

"I guess it's like me.." says Falco. "I keep leavin' they keep beggin' me to come back." Falco flaunts with a wave of his feathery hand, draping his eyes shut as he spoke, leaning back in the chair.

"Who did the 'begging' this time?" Katt asks.

"It was totally Falco." says Slippy, as he pulls a few levers and turns a dial as though he were part of the machine.

"Whuh—Hey Slippy!" Falco scolds, while Miyu, Fay and Katt laugh a bit on the other end of the comlink, audible through the speakers.

"Falco, wanting to be with your pals is nothing to be ashamed of." says Fay, in the sweetest voice she could make.

"Alright, rich girl, if you liked the team why did you guys leave?" Falco asks. Miyu and Fay both give him a visible glare.

"That's...a loaded question at the very least.." Miyu grunts. "We were still ex-military, and we asked Fox if we could at least have a joint operation with General Pepper, but Fox wanted to maintain the StarFox team as a private military organization, he didn't like all the paperwork invading his privacy...somehow... also He liked having a bill to go with our employment rather than a paycheck." says Miyu.

"The Cornerian Military is a mess, do you really want that to happen to the team?" Falco asks.

"Technically Fay and I still do the joint thing, hasn't been a problem for us." says Miyu.

"Hey Katt, what are you, exactly?" Fay asks. Katt laughs for a moment.

"Haha.. I dunno I just steal a ship and start shooting bad guys. Nobody's done a thing about it so I assume it isn't a problem." says Katt. Fay perks her lips and tilts her head, letting her right poofy ear dangle.

"That's actually pretty badass, I think I might be jealous.." says Fay, Miyu turns her eyes to Fay at the word 'jealous'.

"I thought I was the only badass feline in your life." says Miyu. Fay leans back and laugh.

"Ehh you are Miyu, what's got you worried?" Fay squeaks.

Katt smiles.

"Miyu, you are a badass. You two have your own ship, and you SAVED StarFox team. How often does any para-military ever do the saving in that relationship?" Katt asks.

"Hey I don't need saving, I'm badass!.." Falco complains.

"Yeah, yeah, Falco.." Katt says with a groan.

"Falco you ain't exactly independent.. Then again none of us are." says Peppy.

"Oh yeah, Falco needs the team, he just won't admit it." says Slippy. Falco crosses his arms and bows his head. Whatever, I just don't want to leave ya guys hangin'." says Falco.

"Yyyup..." Says Slippy with strong sarcasm.

Suddenly, General Pepper's face sprang up over all others, displayed to both ships' crews. A sulky old dog face with saggy eyes beneath a pair of sunglasses.

"This is General Pepper of the Cornerian Army. We are ready to receive landings at Corneria base immediately!"


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: A Call to Arms. Old friends and New.**

The Astropolis, the large satellite mega-structure hidden in shadow, lights begin to gleam out into space, no longer hidden, beyond it, a massive armada of ships loom. Several Venomian Betrayer class super destroyers spear-head the fleet, one had a distinct paint-job, with purple lines instead of red. And a snarly wolf face painted on its side, marked with the dialogue. "StarWolf."

The Astropolis and a swarm of Venomian capital ships looms over the faded brown-green glow of Venom; dotted with speckles of light where cities were constructed. Now, the Ruffian Sargasso station was in view as well; visibly distant against one of Venom's moons with a blur of focus.

On board the bridge of the front-most betrayer marked with a StarWolf logo, the metal entree slide door flings up into the ceiling, and Wolf, Leon, Panther, and Algy walk on through, joined by a couple ruffian-now-Venom-army officers. The bridge was a bronze-colored trapezoid shaped room with the narrower toward the front, where the spider-web like windows opened up to view the whole ship, as well as windows all along the side, giving them a wide, panoramic strategic field of naked-eye view.

The computer consoles were all in neat rows that slightly arrow toward the front. The ceiling is a brickwork of cubical metallic structures, pipes, wires, ceiling mounted screens. The floor, a shiny bronze metal tile-work.

"- Oh and sir, you know that job-add you put out on the crime-net?" The officer goes on to say. Wolf, Leon's bulbous eyes dart back to the officer, as Wolf turns with scrunched eyebrows. "Job-add? I thought I removed that after Algy joined." says Wolf.

"Well...three more people have lined up for the job.." says the officer. "We have them here ready for interview.." says the officer.

"Ugh.." Wolf groans as he rubs his face. "Alright, bring'em in let's get this over with. The StarFox team is getting rather big and we'll be outnumbered.." Says Wolf.

The door flings open, and in walks a fat, portly swine; decorated with reconstructive surgery scars, and several metal prosthetic in his face, including a box-like bionic eye with a yellow gleam. As well as a tall, slender, monkey with a skinnier looping tail, metallic prosthetics in his legs.

"You guys again?" Wolf asks.

"Pigma? I thought you were dead when you were assimilated by the Aparoids." says Wolf. "And my feelings are..mixed, at best.." he says with a low growling tone.

"I was absorbed, next thing I knew I was floating in space, almost didn't make it back to my ship!" says Pigma with a squeeky whirly voice. "Don't you guys remember? I was there when the Anglars hit too!" he says.

"I remember things differently.." Leon says with a subtle, low, resentful tone. Wolf raises his hand slightly.

"Relax Leon.." He says. "I don't care, Pigma. You're in since you have experience, you just better watch what you do." Wolf snaps.

"So...I can't be Emperor of Venom anymore?" Andrew whines.

"No, you had your shot, Andrew, you remember." says Leon. "Your text-book bad tactics cost us the rebellion. I'm surprised you even survived." says Leon. Panther glances to Leon and chuckles a bit.

"C'mon Leon, give him a chance, we can place bets on how long he lasts." says Panther.

"Whuh-Watch your mouth! I only want to contribute what I can to the Great Emperor Andross!" Andrew whines some more.

"You're-in!" says Wolf with a slight snap.

"Just...control the volume, please?" says Algy, as he rubs his finger along his ear. Having stood and watched the old members banter loudly.

Suddenly, there is a flashing light at one of the consoles, that a ruffian engineer stood at, he turns to the StarWolf group to speak.

"Sir, we have a call from Lord Bowman." he says.

"Bring it up on the main screen." Wolf replies. The engineer taps at a few buttons and keys and flicks his finger across a small touchscreen. A large holographic view screen from a stem protrusion in the ceiling flickers into view as a projection. A short flicker of static spills across the screen, followed by Dash Bowman's face, of a live feed fills the projector screen, with a vicious look on his face.

"The future of the new Venom Empire rests on you, StarWolf." Says Dash.

"Prepare to move your armada into position and await the signal, the Astropolis is taking position now, and it will only be a matter of time before its presence is noticed by the Lylat Civilian media. Currently, it sits in higher orbit as does the Sargasso Space station, we can move our command stations as necessary once we secure Planetary orbit regions throughout the system." Says Dash.

"And, the StarFox team?" Wolf asks.

"They've probably already told General Pepper what they had seen, all we can do is go forward with our plan. Prepare the invasion." says Dash. "For now, the media will be distracted.." he adds.

Meanwhile, the Great Fox and the Cornerian battle carrier had arrived at Corneria; the two silvery white gleaming ships shown bright against the blackness of space, and the sea of stars that fill it.

The atmosphere of Corneria was bustling, ships coming into its orbit, or leaving. Military ships, as well as nonmilitary freight ships flying back and forth, a few orbital space station platforms are always visible.

Fox looked on through the Great Fox bridge window at the various satellites while Rob64 and Peppy were at the Great Fox helm, sending in the clearance codes as the Great Fox III and the carrier came into Cornerian space defense zone. Visible clear through the viewing windows, off toward the darkness of space, gleamed the enormous defense turret; a central tube-like structure with a large metal disk rounding it, where the primary hyper laser ray cannon was; running along a rail system on the disk. Closer to Corneria was the Orbital Gate for warp travel. The two mega-structures gleamed, reflecting sunlight, and making themselves look like enormous artificial moons.

From time to time, a Bull Dog K fighter would fly passed; brownish yellow fighters marked with green stripes, or a specialized, commander type featuring a striped dorsal fin, and longer bent wings. Others were smaller fighters with dorsal and bow mount wings, a few varying types of CDF aircraft.

For capital ships, there were the typical silvery-white longships with three massive booster structures along the middle structure; a bridge quite like the Great Fox but a bit boxier, two boost structures on top, and one on the bottom. Others were large, square-rectangular shaped ships, with simple structures, and turrets lining them. Sometimes spaces where fighters could be launched. Some looked very similar to the Carrier on which were Miyu, Fay and Katt.

Falco sat beside Fox as he stood by the window, cross armed at a swiveling chair. Slippy and Rob64 were at another set of controls.

Beltino and Peppy sat beside Krystal, as Peppy wraps a bind of cloth over Krystal's abdomen; where she was scratched by Wolf; the cars cut in deep and had stained her blue flight-suit a blackish runny mess.

"You really should have waited for Fox, Young lady. You could have been minced meat.." says Peppy.

"I couldn't wait, I wanted to make sure Slippy was okay." says Krystal.

"I know... it was brave, but next time you might not be so lucky. I don't know anyone who's taken on that Wolf O'Donnell in any kind of fight, except Fox." says Peppy. "It's a good thing he really took after his father.." says Peppy. Krystal nodded, to not put Peppy off, but she felt guilty for just nodding on, after what Fox had told her. Suddenly, a nervous ebb flicked through her mind, Krystal jolts as her extrasensory called to her, she felt a frightful presence, a mass of rage emitting through space across the Lylat System.

The GreatFox III descended into the atmosphere of Corneria, flying through a blue sky surrounded by flushing clouds, above beautiful blue oceans and continents filled with green. Silvery white streaks of highway bridges extending to horizons across the oceans, connecting Corneria's continents and many, many cities, and suburbs that spanned the planet between forests and grasslands.

The GreatFox III, sped across the sky, while everything around it was a blur, before long, a large city nestled beside some rocky mountains, and the sea side of Corneria came into view, some platforms out in the water interconnected as well, through bridges and city platforms. Tall, white and silver citadels rose from the dense city and glisten in the golden sunlight, surrounded by the many elevated roads, bullet trains, and tunnels passing through larger buildings. At the bottom street level, at the summits of the Corneria city skyscrapers, was a maze-work of swerving roads with gleaming sidewalks populated by cheery Cornerian citizens varying of species, the paneled streets filled with speeding hovercars, and in open patches of the city were local city parks, green grass, and trees, with stone paths hedged with flowers, benches, and statues.

The Great Fox passes over the city, slowing down; just passed the city inland, was a flatter area of grass, before the barren country roads lead to the Corneria airbase. There were a few towers, and military structures, with paneled landing strips, and fields. The grassy fields beyond the intricate landing base stretched on until disrupted by tall, snow capped mountains that rose from the horizon line.

Up ahead, was a large brick-like base, lined on either side with deep metal canal ravines where ships would land, lit brightly by holographic guide lights that rose from the base. The Great Fox III hovered into place, and slowly descended into the canal, while the Carrier passed over-head, and descended at another landing ravine.

The ravines were deep, bulky metal canyons, lined with enormous cradle arms where the Great Fox III touched down, and was held like a cradled baby. Pipes, wires, and grab-arms lined the sides beyond the Great Fox III's windows filled their field of view. A long pipe like bridge extended from a rivet in the wall, and interlocked with a small corridor in the side of the Great Fox III.

"I'll remain on the ship, Rob64 and I will handle some repair on the Arwings." Says Slippy.

"I will wait here too." says Krystal. Peppy, Falco, and Fox turn and leave the bridge doors.

"I-I..I Think I'll go join the General at the mission control." Says Beltino Toad.

"I'll probably be of better help through there." Says Beltino.

"Okay Pop, keep an eye on the General for us." Says Slippy.

They passed through the Great Fox III's corridors until they reached the side exit door, and passed on through the windowed bridge, Fox looks on through the windows at the Great Fox III filling the field of view; it made a slight smile grow on his face.

"It's amazing... I just wish we still had the one Dad ordered.." says Fox. Falco flares his nostrils and chuckles to himself.

"Blame the old man, Fox.." Falco says with a scoff.

"Aye, If I hadn't plowed the road for the rest of ya, we'd all be assimilated by the Aparoids by now!" Peppy snaps. "Your lasers certainly weren't gonna do a whole lot to that shield." Peppy adds. "I'm just glad the Warp Gate wasn't destroyed." says Beltino. "The fleet would never have made it in time, the Queen would have replenished their attack force many times over by then for sure.."

Fox grunts and turns away from the ship just as they passed through another set of doors, entering another corridor that was a bit wider, and angular at the sides, now there were more lights as well, and other corridors to their left or right as they walked along.

"I'm just annoyed that we went through all that trouble to bring down those hatchers and generators, just for them to back it up with another system of generators on another one of those weird structures. Krystal and I barely handled the first... It probably would have gone on forever if it weren't for Peppy blowing the whole place, and ramming through...let's just hope we don't have to deal with that whole thing again." Says Fox.

They traversed the base until they walked through another pair of doors, leading into another wider round room filled with curving rows of computer consoles, and lower lighting. General Pepper stood with his hands held behind his back, looking on at a large screen displaying a map of the Lylat System. At its center, a large star, their sun. Not far from it, a dying, dimmer red star, that was much smaller, a red-dwarf. A ways away displayed the Lylat System's other planets. The center of the room at its lowest tier was Corneria's logo.

The first planet from the sun, was Macbeth; a dry arid miserable planet, but rich with resources. Half the planet or so is gray and rocky, the other half is a volcanic fiery region that gleams red. The next furthest planet, is Katina; a planet of grasslands, fungal growth, and dry patches. Then there was Fortuna; a lush green world of forests and jungles, the planet itself featured rings. Beyond Fortuna was Corneria; a blue planet with lush green continents. Beyond the asteroid belt between the sun and the red dwarf, was Fichina, a cold ice world kept cold by its distance from the suns combined with its weak, faint atmosphere. In another orbit, was Aquas and Zoness, Aquas was a deep, blue waterworld, and Zoness, was once a sea planet like it's twin, featuring beach islands, but was now polluted, and unlivable.

The Lylat System was a bit of an oblong double system as another faint red dwarf dances with the sun and whisks the outer planets about beyond it, Solar. Beyond Solar was Titania, kept dry and arid from a combination of the two suns, it was a ringed planet. The next planet was Eladard, a dark, gloomy world ruined by industrialization, it was a cloudy purple color, with its own set of rings. Beyond Eladard at the edges of the Lylat System, first was a fairly large gas planet that had two planet-like moons. The orange gas giant first had Sauria, kept warm as the gas giant follows Solar, so it gets two sources of solar energy. It is a tropical, Jurassic planet of oceans, mountains, frigid snow wastes at its highest mountains to the North, and a blue sea. Its neighbor Cerenia, once a vibrant peaceful world, now left a dull gray, with glistening red cracks visible from space; paths of leaking mantle.

Beyond Cerenia and Sauria orbiting their mother gas planet, was an independent planet that maintains its own orbit, but seems to follow the gas planet, was Animus; it was quite alike Corneria, an ocean with green continents, but significantly smaller, as Corneria was quite large.

lastly, was Venom, once a gloomy, barren planets, left in the cold due to its sheer distance from the Sun, distant also from the rest of the Lylat System's world regardless of which time in its orbital cycle. Now though, Venom's atmosphere had been terraformed to absorb solar energy more efficiently, it was slowly turning blue, and had brilliant cities visible from space.

In addition to all that in the Lylat System, there was the asteroid belt that lay between Corneria and Fichina. There was the gaseous cloud region of the Asteroid belt that orbited at an odd position, teasing Macbeth, where which was the resource-rich Sargasso region. There were also quite a few space colony structures throughout the Lylat System. Beyond the Lylat System, but always in view of the Space sectors X, Y, and Z, were colorful clouds of gas, also distant, was the Awesome Blackhole.

It always looked like a massive black orb, producing an aura of distortion around it, its sheer gravity bending light and yanking it into itself.

Fox was lost for a moment staring at the map while Peppy stood talking to General Pepper, explaining everything to him, that Dash was in trouble.

"Well, we're glad you came down to it, StarFox." says Pepper. "You will be rewarded for getting to the bottom of this, I will have my men on it at once." says General Pepper. Fox came back into focus just as he heard Pepper speak.

"Alright General, we'll stay in the area if you need any more help from us." Fox says.

Fox, Falco and Peppy were about to leave the room, when Fox heard a familiar voice call to him.

"Hey Fox watcha doin' around here, man!?" the voice shouts, Fox turns on his heel while his tail whisks about. It was Bill Gray; a tall, toned, broad-shouldered dog with brown fur, and floppy ears, he wore sunglasses and had a proud uniform, adorned with medals and pins.

"Bill!" Fox yips excitedly. Bill reached out and grabbed Fox, pulling him in for a hug; Bill was quite strong.

"I see you guys are active again." says Bill. "You know if you wanted more consistent employment during peacetime, y'all could always join the Cornerian Army. We always welcome new faces in my Unit." Bill says with a booming, proud voice, a big goofy smile on his face as he plants his fists on his hips. Fox flares his nostrils as he stumbles back.

"Yeah... Sorry Bill..maybe next time." says Fox. Bill tilts his head and rolls his cheek.

"Eh." he says.

"So what brings you back to Corneria Base?" Bill asks as he walks beside Fox, Falco and Peppy.

"Peppy's base was attacked on Eladard, Slippy was kidnapped, and it was StarWolf, Falco, Katt, Krystal went to save Slippy, and got help from Miyu and Fay, and that's when Peppy and I arrived." says Fox.

"I heard about the attack, we've scrambled fighters and have had heavy squadron patrols near every planet for hours, it's been hectic to keep it all straight. I got promoted too high." says Bill.

"Do you still help out in fighter battles?" Fox asks.

"Of course. There's no one high ranked enough to tell me not to get into a fighter, except maybe General Pepper." says Bill.

They soon walked to an observation room, looking on at the Great Fox III.

"You guys got another ship?" Asks Bill.

"Yeah, Peppy commissioned it, he, Slippy, and Krystal had been working on this project for like a year, the ship itself has been under construction since the Anglars attacked.." says Fox.

"Yeah, woulda come in handy back then.." Falco grunts. "The ship we had at the time sucked." he adds.

"You guys are spoiled." Says Miyu, as she, Fay and Katt approached from behind, standing in the corridor, peering through the window at the Great Fox III looming over them.

"We wouldn't have to be if our crap didn't get blown up all the time!" Falco snaps.

"Who's fault is that?" asks Miyu as she gives him a sarcastic giggle.

"For what it's worth, you guys get the most out of it, we basically just live in our ship to avoid having to pay for a home." says Fay.

"You guys live on that thing?" Falco asks.

"Yup." says Miyu.

"Why?" Falco asks.

"I just told you, to avoid having to also buy a home, the ships maintenance is a cost, but we need a ship. A home might cost significantly less, but then we'd have to get rid of the ship, and being able to traverse the Lylat System in style and comfort... well, you get the idea." says Fay.

"I dunno if he does." says Miyu. Falco jerks his head to the side and crosses his arms with a prompt grumble.

Meanwhile, on board the Great Fox III, Slippy, Krystal, and Rob64 were at work repairing the Arwings, two of which were badly damaged. Rob64 stood at a hover-lift, which featured mechanical arms that plucked off pieces of damaged paneling, setting them aside to be re-welded or recycled later, and taking up fresh pieces of paneling to place them back on, and bolt the ship together, while Slippy had his hands deep in an Arwing's fuselage, disassembling components to see what was damaged. Krystal was merely helping with hand-work, pulling back paneling to help Rob64, or giving Slippy an extra pair of hands with fiddling with the Arwings internal components, sure to obey his commands, since she knew so little on the technical engineering of the Arwings.

"Falco is always such a pain with wrecking my Arwings, but I was hoping you'd be a bit less brash, Krystal." says Slippy.

"I'm sorry, Slippy." says Krystal, watching Rob64 and Slippy work efficiently. "I just wasn't sure how else I was going to get into the station, with Panther and Wolf on my tail." she explains. Slippy smiles and nods.

"It's alright, by the way..." says Slippy. I kept it from you guys but I want to show you something." says Slippy. He flips down the last panel of the Arwing, and bolts it together with a loud power tool. Slippy had replaced the wings, using the ring machine that detaches the one ones, envelopes the Arwing, and plants in the new. He had also repaired the blast damage on Falco's, and both were nearly complete in their repairs, in only a few hours.

Slippy leaps down from the scaffolding, and motions Krystal and Rob64 to follow him.

"This way, Krys." he says. They walk across the broad Great Fox hangar, to where the specialized Arwings were. Up ahead, was where there were deep rivets in the floor with the launch rails, but up above their heads were where the specialized Arwings were, locked in a holding mechanism.

"Peppy and I wanted to keep it a surprise for the others, but might as well show it off now." says Slippy. Before them, were the spare Arwings in neat pocket rows to the side, and facing parallel to them were the two Arwings that had a bulkier hull, and a more bulbous rounded cockpit canopy. "As you remember before, we've experimented with alternate specialized Arwings, but before the Bullfrog for example, there were these, bomber-variant Arwings. I've refurbished them, and given them upgrades. Originally these, and the Heavy Assault variant over there were designed by the Cornerian Astrodynamics corporation owned by Fay's family." says Slippy. "But now, the bombers have been improved." He says, one of the bomber types had a sophisticated series of arms along its lower exterior. "This one's mine. Not only can it perform bombing tasks, it is also capable of performing on-board repairs with other Arwings mid-flight." Slippy explains. "The other one's Peppy's, but he says he prefers the typical Arwing." says Slippy.

"Fantastic, but will they fair well in a fight with StarWolf?" Krystal asks.

"Well, no, that's why we will still have the interceptors, owned by Miyu and Fay if they choose to stay with us, the standard Arwings, and the Heavy Assault variant to help compensate." says Slippy. "The Bombers will be mainly for bringing down bigger targets faster and more efficiently than the others." Slippy explains.

Slippy walks Krystal a short ways again, to where the Heavy Assault Arwing hung; longer fuselage, with an also round cockpit canopy toward the front, it had double set blue shoulders, 8 instead of 4.

"This one will be yours, Krystal." says Slippy. "This beast is more designed for heavy attacks at range against enemy high performance aircraft, as well as large targets." says Slippy. "It isn't the most maneuverable though, so you'll depend on others for some support, remember Krystal, we're a team after all."

"Wonderful." says Krystal. "This ship is made for me you say?" she asks.

"Well, it was designed by the Astrodynamics corporation, but I'm the one who put it together, I made my own improvements to the design, not to brag. Soon, it'll be equipped with a psionic interface, so it can work together with your telepathy for increased performance." says Slippy.

"We have that technology?" Krystal asks with an obvious hymn of shock in her voice.

"Yeah, it seems some of your old magical Cerenian tech had that, I managed to reverse-engineer it from those jewel-incrested things you wear, apparently not only do they help you channel your powers, but they can also interface with other technology if it can interface properly. Apparently, Andross had very similar technology back in the day, we don't know how he got it, but if Andross can do it, we better be able to as well." Slippy explains.

"Oh.. Slippy, you really are something else. We wouldn't be in a good place without you, Slippy." Krystal says, smiling on Slippy with praise. Slippy rubs the back of his head as his modesty teases him, he wasn't usually praised for his technological accomplishments.

"Thanks Krystal." Slippy says as he grows blue in the face. "So, my own modifications... it features the same beam cannon that the LandMaster is equipped with as you can see. It is also where the charge shots are fired from, and on the other side, it has a beringer launcher for smart bombs, so it can fire more than one at a time...preferably done at long range." says Slippy. Krystal smiles and nods and giggles.

"Yes I understand the danger, I'll be careful, Slippy, I promise." says Krystal.

"You seem happier than you did earlier." Says Slippy.

"I dunno, I guess I was just being moody earlier." says Krystal.

"Hmm.." Slippy trails off.

Suddenly, they notice Fox had joined them, Fox had walked in joined by Miyu and Fay, entering the storage hangar. Fox set his hands on his hips as he overlooks his hangar.

"I've missed this.." says Fox. Miyu glances at Fay with a mocking smirk, internally scoffing at the sentimental nonsense. Fay shoots her a disapproving look in response, such feelings were perfectly valid.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: The Lylat Declaration.**

The sun was setting to Corneria's horizon, and the green landscape was painted over with an orange hue, the ocean patching in at one horizon went from blue, reflected the color of the sky as it grew purple, further from where the sun was dipping below the horizon. Soon night had fallen, in the distance, the gleaming citadels of Corneria city were visible. Multiple levels of elevated bridges and roads glow like veins of light interconnecting the vast forest of buildings. The brightest lights and holographic advertisements were up in the city's canopy.

At Corneria Base. In the dimly lit situation control room; a large round room with rows of various control consoles, and the Cornerian logo in the middle. General Pepper stood at a set of controls, beside a Cornerian military engineer; a dog-species male who tapped at keys, and spun knobs, and tapped at a touchscreen.

"Sir, the secure transmission has been sent and received. But we haven't gotten any kind of reply." he says. General Pepper tugs at various folds and flaps on his decedent red military uniform, decorated with gold lacing, and a collection of badges and medals. "Should we wait, or send another message?" The engineer asks. Pepper closes his eyes and thinks.

"I feel they may have already received our message, I want to wait, but I think we should send a dispatch of agents to Venom to investigate... But I fear that may stir up some tension." says Pepper. Peppy had been listening in, scratching his scruffy chubby face entranced in his thoughts.

"General!" Peppy interrupts, walking up closer to General Pepper. "Sir, if I may... several of our men had been killed by StarWolf at Eladard Base, today. I think if we released this event to the public press, and then confronted Prime Minister Bowman on the subject of StarWolf, I am sure they will understand..." says Peppy. Pepper nods.

"Good thinking, Peppy. Between you and I, I think you may be the wiser one. I fear since most of Corneria City's Population is asleep we should wait until tomorrow for the assistance of the Capital city's press." says Pepper. "Tomorrow morning we can release the report to the public, and then I think we can dispatch team StarFox to Venom to assist in the investigation." says General Pepper.

"Understood General, I'll let Fox and the others know when they get back." says Peppy.

Meanwhile, night had fallen and the sky was blackish blue, and filled with stars, some of the nearby planets like the bright ice world Fichina were visible, clear tiny spheres next to the twinkling stars.

Falco and Katt stood on a catwalk structure along the side of the hulking armored fortress Corneria base, they could easily see Corneria city's gleaming mass, as well as a few neighboring smaller cities in the distance, buildings and houses along the roads, and the glowing blue and green veins that run through the base, glowing platforms for aircraft landing, and air-control towers that make up this open military facility, around them they could also see the black blue ocean, and the mountains and forests to the other horizons. Over the centuries, Cornerians were able to build their structures without disrupting their natural world, thus maintaining Corneria as a stable ecological environment.

Katt and Falco both rested their elbows on the round metal railing and leaned forward. Looking off at the city.

"I bet you just want to run off into the city to race around in a hot rod again, wouldn't you, Falco?" Katt asks.

"You read my mind." says Falco.

"I think you've run off enough times, Falco." says Katt. "I don't get it, what are you hiding from them, Falco?" Says Katt. Falco sat in silence for a long time before he finally said something, after over a minute, where Katt heard only the sound of the wind, and the humming of equipment and machinery down below.

"All these years I've tried to keep up with Fox, but I guess I just can't..." Says Falco.

"That's it!?" Katt asks, trying to express dissatisfaction at his answer.

"NO, it's like...I've always acted like that, and now I guess I'm just another guy on the team." says Falco.

"You're still a great pilot, you contribute that to the team." says Katt.

"Well, it's really that they will notice that, and notice my weaker side more. I mean, I want to be able to help Fox protect the others, when I'm just another guy who needs saving...it feels like I'm not helping..." Says Falco. Katt shakes her head.

"Everybody on the team loves you, Falco, they don't care how good a pilot you are, they care that you are there...why am I the one who is telling you this!?" Katt asks. "You really are an emotional wreck if I have to be the one to break it to you.." Katt growls as she rubs her fingers against her temples.

"For what's it's worth, Katt...thanks. And...thanks for not tellin' nobody I worry about this stuff." says Falco. "To be honest with you, Katt...when I first joined the team, I didn't care about them, but mission after mission, they're were annoying yeah but...they're not bad." says Falco.

"See Falco? Was that so hard?" says Katt.

"Well admitting that did hurt my pride a little, yeah. Happy?" Falco asks.

"With you, happy as I'm gonna get." says Katt. Katt turns to Falco and begins walking away. "I'll catch you later Falco, good luck with your friends, little man."

In the Great Fox III's hangar, Fox watched as Rob64 and Slippy finished the Arwings repairs, while Krystal was with Miyu and Fay behind him, Miyu leaned up against the lip of the exit door that lead down the main corridor of the ship. While Fay and Krystal stood facing each other. Fox turns to face them and begins in their direction.

"So Fox.." says Miyu. "Krystal says that StarWolf have definitely met Dash Bowman in person, how do you think they got passed their private security?" she asks.

"Krystal, how do you know if they met?" Fox asks. She blinks and locks her fingers together, holding her linked hands to her chest.

"Somehow Wolf was able to shake my probing out of his head, but I did see a glimpse memory of Wolf's view, in Dash's office, standing before him." says Krystal.

"Dash might have let them in.." says Fox. "The way we left things a few years ago, Dash said he would make Venom a much more peaceful world, and StarWolf wanted to clear their names... maybe StarWolf talked Dash into funding them, so they would help Dash maintain order on Venom since relations were still a little...shaky.." Fox goes on.

I dunno, that's what the news lady was talking about yesterday anyway." says Fox.

"Gotta admit she's pretty." Says Miyu. Fox chuckles a bit. Fay looks at Miyu with raised eyebrows.

"You think a lot of girls are pretty, Miyu." says Fay. Miyu gives Fay a fanged grin.

"Anyway, I think that's how StarWolf were able to get the funding to reinforce their old base, and I think that's also how they got some new warships. It's Andrew's rebellion all over again." says Krystal.

"Urgh.. That's not good." Fox says with a groan. "The only reason we beat Andrew's so easily is because Andrew was a tactical idiot, Wolf and Leon especially were always a bit smarter.." says Fox. "If they had their own fleet, who knows what they will do." he adds.

"We can take care of it, Fox. Like before." says Krystal.

"I know.." Fox says with a lift chin.

Suddenly, the entry doorway slides open, and Peppy walks on through.

"Alright everyone time for some shut-eye. Rob64 will get us into orbit for now, and tomorrow we head out for Venom to help Dash with the investigation." says Peppy, shouting loud with his raspy old voice. Miyu looks to Fay and jerks her head to the door.

"Well, I guess we will see you later." says Miyu. Fay follows at Miyu's side as the turn toward the exit door.

"Wait.." Says Fox. Miyu and Fay both stop and turn to face Fox. "There's plenty of room on the StarFox team." says Fox.

"Sure Fox." says Miyu, calm and controlled, while Fay smiles brightly and shakes her fists excitedly at her hips.

"I think we will keep our ship though if that's alright." says Miyu, Fay slouches her eyebrows and turns to Miyu.

"Miyu, we have a place on the StarFox team now though!.." She says.

"Yeah, and we can still keep the old ship too, I thought you liked it." says Miyu.

"I do.." Says Fay. "This ship's quite a bit bigger than ours though.." Says Fay.

"Yeah, and they're on like their third ship." says Miyu.

Miyu and Fay continued to mutter to each other as they walked through the canal to their ship. Soon enough, the Great Fox III's bay doors slid shut with a large metal wall, and they soon heard it shutter and roar, the sounds of its reactors and engines firing. The Great Fox III, and the Cornerian Battle carrier shortly after both lift from the landing canals, rising into the night sky, their lights gleaming against the dark of night. Their thruster engines were bright yellow flares at their rear.

By the time Fox and the others passed a window, Corneria's blue horizon was curved, as they had entered orbit, and were now slowly drifting away to outer orbit side by side. Each ship had their own sleeping quarters located in a crew galley usually at the lower core of the ship. Separate rooms for men and women. The ships rounded the planet while everyone slept in wait for tomorrow, before finally being awoken the next day by Rob64's wake up alarm blaring in the bunk quarters to summon them to the bridge for deck duty. Miyu and Fay had a similar alarm pre-set by the ship's on-board computer.

General Pepper sent the report, and the ships were each were preparing for a cruising jump. Fox sips coffee from a mug as he sits at the Great Fox bridge, joined by Slippy beside him; tapping away at the keyboards and touchscreens, Peppy and Rob64 at another control booth awaiting orders from Fox, down a tier at another row of consoles, sat Falco and Krystal. Falco leans back in his seat with his feet propped on the dashboard, while Krystal sat quietly at her seat, staring out the Great Fox III's sleek canopy windows off into space, her arms crossed over her tummy as though she were sick.

Soon, on the monitor screen they had hanging before the crew deck chairs, absently playing whatever was on the news, they saw a news-bulletin animation flash on the screen, catching Fox's eye.

"Slippy, quick, turn it up." says Fox, pointing to the screen. As a brown-furred canine woman with glasses appeared at the anchor desk.

"Alrighty." Slippy squeaks. He rolls his finger along a touch screen, and a small blue meter on the bottom of the screen goes up.

"Hello this is Corneria City News Projection Broadcast, Bailey Beagle reporting. We have received an urgent Press Release that a CDF Weapons Testing Facility on Eladard operated by Chief Scientist Beltino Toad, had fallen under attack by the Criminal Mercenary group, StarWolf." She says. She speaks as she turns, and moves her hand as a fuzzy video feed of the base on Eladard from an aircraft viewpoint shows the base in smoke, and the landing strips decorated by columns of some, fire, and blast craters. It's nothing that Fox and the others haven't seen before, but the images are still quite chilling.

"Team StarWolf is still at large, and are still wanted for their connections with extremist groups such as Oikonny's Rebellion, the Sargasso piracy groups, as well as their war crimes during the Lylat Wars." she goes on to say, mugshot images of Wolf O'Donnell, Panther Coroso, and Leon Powalski sprang up, as well as a distant photograph taken from security cam footage of Algy, zoomed in and cropped. The whole StarFox team looked on, they could tell that some details were left out, to avoid the leaking of some details on their technology, like that StarWolf had kidnapped Slippy, since it was Slippy who was developing the new shield system StarWolf was after.

"In other news, we have just seen late last night, a new Dreadnought ship has been seen over Corneria City, and is believed to belong to the Mercenary group team StarFox. We don't know if the team has returned or not, or who is on their team roster, but it is speculated now that they have been commissioned by General Pepper to investigate and engage team StarWolf after the recent attack." The news lady goes on to say, with a cropped image of the Great Fox III from down below; the Cornerian Battle carrier is visible beside it as well.

"Hrrmmghhh..." Fox gives an annoyed growl at the screen. "Why do they always have to chase our tails with cameras..." Says Fox. As the news droned on about pop culture, or entertainment, suddenly, the image begins to flicker, nobody else seems to notice but Fox as he looks around the bridge.

Falco had clunky headphones on his head, sinking even deeper into his seat while his boots rest on the guard rail of the console table. Krystal whom sat beside him was in a meditative trance, sitting perfectly still with her arms crossed and her legs static, staring off into space, except with her eyes shut and her head bent low. Slippy and Peppy were in a debate of sorts, and he wasn't sure if Miyu and Fay were watching the news or not. Rob64 stood idly by, beside Fox. Awaiting his orders.

"Rob, is there something wrong with the signal?" Fox asks. Rob64 stiffly turns to the Telecommunications console, his agile mechanical hands begin flicking switches and hitting buttons, and precisely turning a knob back and forth, as the screen begins to shake and flicker with static. Slippy slaps the console.

"Damn thing.." He curses. Fox looks on nervously. Suddenly, Krystal jolts awake from her psionic trance. She jumps to her feet, shaking and trembling from what she had seen.

"Krystal?" Fox calls down to her. She turns to face everyone else, with a cold, frightened look on her face.

In New Venom City, Venomian vehicles and aircraft paraded through the streets, flags rose up on towers and poles atop buildings, and there were mass gatherings in a larger circular park area just in front of the main government palace; a large metallic building interconnected with many others, but towering above all else.

About the city and across the Venomian landscape was still quite desert like, as the terraformation only occurred in set places and within the cities. Rugged canyons and caverns with lakes of lava glowing within still decorated the landscape beyond the major cities.

Dash Bowman walks through a decadent wide corridor with a high, arched ceiling surrounded by pillars, with symbols and figures carved into them, and paintings and banners hanging from the walls; displaying the Venom Empire symbol, there were also rows of flags decorating his corridor, which led to a set of sliding doors, two armed guards stood, they stood firm and gave Dash an honored solute.

Dash passes on through the door, letting it slide open before him. Just outside, was a large marble balcony overlooking a sea of his citizens standing in the park area outside the government building. Chanting. "Ooh Ooh Ooh!" en mass. The chanting crowd was quite deafening.

Dash wore a decorative red cape, connected to the rest of his outfit by a gleaming golden collar, and golden shoulder guards that jut out each way, he wore a fine, red overcoat with gold streams and threads sewn into it, decorated by medals at his pocket protector. Dash steps onto a podium well in-view of the chanting masses down below. Guards surrounded him along the balcony cobblestones. The lights set on Dash, he glows brightly against the bleak, faint day-time sky of Venom, despite the terraformation it was still quite dim even as the sun hung in the sky. Venom was far from the sun, and was always covered by a thick smokey overcast. A guard takes a few steps to Dash and whispers into his pointed ear.

"Broadcasting live on all channels across the Lylat System in five, my lord." he says. Dash smiles and nods. Just then, a huge red and gold Venom flag rolled down behind Dash from the castle roof, and several Venomian fighters flew over with screaming thrusters, painting the sky in gleaming green streaks.

On the Great Fox III, the flickering screen suddenly blips off, and then back on, displaying a bleak, shadowy image of Dash Bowman standing on a podium, with a rippling Venomian flag behind him. Fox's pupils shrink as he and Peppy stare on at the screen, Krystal and Falco look on as well, Falco slanted his eyes in disbelief. Krystal's face shrinks in terror. Slippy shrinks as well, quite frightened.

On the other ship, Miyu and Fay both sat, wide-eyed, their eyes glued to their screen. Their bridge quite a bit smaller than that of the Great Fox, they had a smaller screen, but the light on their faces illuminating from their screen now taunted their minds.

General Pepper, and all the Cornerian militants stare on at the large screen, even though all of their smaller broadcast screen were occupied by the very same live feed. Bill Gray glances at the screen and gasps, staring up at it with a a gaping maw. General Pepper tries his best to remain calm as he sets his hands behind his back, and locks his face with all the discipline he can muster. Beltino Toad puts his fingers into his mouth as his eyes flick to one screen after another, frantically trying to find a screen display that wasn't this image.

Out in the Cornerian city street, in the town square, all at once, hovercars stopped, and drivers got out to look up at the screen that was built into the news building, and listen to a voice speaking to them from the monitor, echoing through the streets. Katt Monroe stood on a sidewalk, surrounded by a crowd of frightened, and or confused civilians. A mother stood beside her, clutching her two children close, while a man in a dress suit, holding a headset to his face, let it drop to the chrome pavement.

Within the Venomian fleet as it prepared for a warp jump just beyond the gleaming Astropolis, Wolf and his teammates stood in a row at their bridge, joined by Venomian technicians, and military officers looked on at their screen, as Dash appeared before them to speak.

"I speak to all my brothers and sisters; fellow children and subjects of the Great Emperor Andross!" Says Dash. "After the end of the first Lylat War, the man who brought strength to our people, brought power to our planet, Andross was killed, the Cornerian-led Lylat government collared us, put a boot on our necks and told us to sit quietly while our people are left to suffer in poverty, and defeat. All efforts made by our people to bring freedom to our empire were met with military Force, an effort by Corneria to keep us in our place, and keep themselves at the center of Lylat Power. The greedy dogs of Corneria care not for us, or the rest of the Lylat System. What fruits have blossomed in our Lylat System under their reign? Several years of ongoing conflict, crime, vulnerability and further massacre and destruction midst the invasions of the Aparoid Collective, followed by the Anglar Empire a few short years after." says Dash.

"This last year and a half, I have managed to lift the sanctions from Venom, we have rebuilt our military to its former strength, but only in secret...only with individuals left over from the various Rebel and hold out groups who refused to submit to Corneria's law. Now, we are open to recruitment, join your brothers and sisters. Corneria will no longer be the center of Lylat Power, their reign of corruption ends today, and tonight; our reign of glory, stability, and a hopeful future, begins!"

Dash's voice echos from the speakers as he raises his fist, to the roaring applause of his people, his men and women in uniform; they too raise their fists, chanting in oohs and aahs in a collective voice. 


End file.
